Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The Mathematical Methods 1 quiz that David and I gave last Friday is unique in the sense that for once David had a major part in deciding what questions would be in it.

I had written the questions with the equations involving absolute value questions at around 8am on Friday when he arrived and said that not only did he skip inequalities involving absolute value completely but even the equations of degree two (in other words, quadratic) involving absolute value.

Besides that, he was the one who picked the questions from the third chapter. In the first part, the students had to come up with the equation of the line given (a) two points – which was the only thing I taught them the day before (b) a point and the slope, (c) an intercept and the slope and (d) two intercepts.

In the second part, he pointed to two questions on the computation of the distance and the midpoint given two points, only the first requirement of which I had discussed with my class.

For the last part, he chose the question wherein given three points, the students have to prove that those three points describe an equilateral triangle.

Before the class, the evaluations in charge from the Registrar’s Office called up and apologized for not showing up the day before. She said she forgot after evaluating another class, and then she suggested giving the evaluation after my quiz, but with the additional instructions that I ask the students to stay until the end of the class because she had to give another evaluation to the class in the next room, which was Trigonometric Applications.

I agreed. After all, this was the original schedule she requested the week before.

At the start of the quiz I spoke to them firmly again, this time because we were short one test booklet, which means that someone did not pass. Since no one would own up, I told them that when I found out who that was, that person would have to pass three test booklets next time.

In retrospect, I could have just said that everyone will receive a bonus except that student.

I also said that they did not have to answer the questions in the test that we did not go through the day before, although I didn’t enumerate which numbers and they didn’t ask.

At the same time I wrote on the board how they could get a second point on the line given the first point and the slope: that the number just means a movement of spaces up (or down if the number is negative) as much as the numerator, and the denominator describes the number of spaces moved to the right from the first point.

I also clarified the definition of the midpoint of a line segment, and an equilateral triangle.

I saw the evaluations in charge outside the room and going to the neighboring class at around 15 minutes before the end of the period, and I told the students that they could pass their papers early if they wanted, but they had to stay (just like in the mechanics quiz). Some stayed outside after leaving their bags in the room, and I didn’t know that the evaluation was already starting there.

She was very patient though, because she even waited for the last two students who passed their papers, and she entered the room to give them the evaluation form as I left, the way I know evaluation is usually conducted (besides being at the beginning of the class).

Since last term I was evaluated in my electricity and magnetism lab by upperclassmen, I’m curious as to how the freshmen (and repeaters at that some in my Trigonometric Applications class besides) as well as the new transferees now react to my way of teaching.

And that’s last week. Tomorrow I’ll talk about the next MM1 session after that, and from there everything else that happened this week. Class dismissed.