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Comments for Week of Sept 15, 2003

So? How's it goin'?


Comments? Questions? Criticisms? Panic?

Where are the questions for the midterm?
Somebody tell me
The midterm review is linked at the top of this page (next to hotspots). The actual midterm questions are a suprise however!! Doing and understanding all of the review and its concepts should prepare you pretty well for the midterm.
Blending Pictures and Sounds – techniques you're welcome to use in your collage, if you'd like. Mark Guzdial

I have been using a friends computer because I cannot get JES to run on my Mac. When I follow th instructions for what to type into the terminal JES will not run the terminal window just displays this message.
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: java/lang/CharSequence

can you help me out so that I can possibly get JES working on my computer.
You have an old version of Java on your computer. (Why new Macs are being sold with the OLD version of Java is beyond me.) Run Software Update (from System Preferences) repeatedly until you see Java 1.4.1 get installed. Then it should work fine. (Several other students ran into this problem, too.) Mark Guzdial
Are any sound questions going to be on the midterm exam? I thought I heard that in Monday's class. If so, I don't need to concentrate on the "sound concept" and "increase the volume, stepped" questions of the review...right?
No volume questions will be on the midterm. Sounds were covered last Friday and are fair to ask. Mark Guzdial

do we need/can we use a calculator for the midterm?
They said at the review session that we will need a calculator and should bring one.
what exactly is the format for the midterm? so since sounds are fair game does that include the "sound concepts" section on the midterm review?
You are welcome to bring a calculator. The midterm is four to five questions like those on the review. Yes, sound concepts is fair game. Mark Guzdial

I just wanted to say thank you for making the midterm exam and the review correspond. I spent a great deal of time going through each question of the review. I am glad people who dedicated effort to the review were rewarded. Although the time constraint for the exam was still hard!
I think the time constraint on the exam was impractical. I was trying to be careful to explain everything to my fullest potential, but by the end of the exam it seems that I was at a disadvantage for doing so.
I think that survey announcement took away precious time from the test that many people needed!!

I do not see why the points should be distributed to the first four questions...I didn't get to finish either, but I left all the concept questions for last so I didn't have time to answer fully on those. Am I being punished for thinking ahead and doing all of the coding problems first?
Distribution of points between problems is something that I set anyway. Given how I saw people answering some of the problems, I felt that it better represented the class' strengths and abilities to re-distribute points–not SIMPLY because people didn't finish the last page. In general, I saw people doing well on the first two coding problems and the conceptual questions and I see that I hadn't prepared you all well enough on how to describe an algorithm and some people did run out of time on the last page. I decided to add more points up front, and I decided to take them from the last problem. I'm glad that you managed your test time well—that's a valuable skill that will pay off for you in lots of situations. I don't believe that this point distribution will hurt anyone. Mark Guzdial

I certainly don't object to having points moved to the earlier part of the test. While I'm commenting, I have to say that I loved having references on the test, like the answers to the review questions we were given to use on the final grade function. And on the subject, ditto what the earlier person said about the reviews. Nice to have so many tools available to us to study.
would it better if we had more time in the exam? Like around 10 more minutes because some people skip some questions for time mangagement concerns and then at the end try to complete their answers. But, in general the quality of exam was the same as it was expected and no surprises that I personaly appreciate that. I just like to suggest if it is ok to extend the time of the exam to more minutes.

I can for the 1 pm class, because there isn't another class in there at 2 pm. I can't for the 3 pm class, because there is another class there at 4 pm. No, the real answer is that I have to be more careful (a) with the problems so that they're do-able in 50 minutes and (b) with the instructions to make clear that you don't have to write a book to get full credit. Mark Guzdial

As you state above, you understand that you did not prep the class well enough to tackle the algorithm problems - in #3 I believe. Why not take away value from 3 and redistribute that rather than take away from only the last problem? Or, take 5 points off of 3 and the last problem and still redistribute that 10 points across the remaining problems? That makes sense to me since that's where you've identified the problem areas to be.
I completely agree with the person above. I think that the majority of students would rather see points taken away from #3, which seemed to be a problem. Not all of us decided to leave problem #5 until the end, so this penalizes us if we got it correct.
Or maybe consider the point distribution on an individual basis. That would probably be a big headache but it seems like the best way to avoid people complaining.
It is completely unfair to change to point values on the problems after the test has been completed. If we had known that the first four problems were going to be worth more points before the test began, we would have been able to put more time and effort into those problems. I think this is completely out of line because some people may have left another problem to finish last instead of question 5 and there grade will be lowered due to the change in distribution of points.
Given how the grades turned out (e.g., question 5 had a 58% average, and relatively few people left question 5 blank), I think that we brought up a lot of people's grades by this change. Mark Guzdial

I think although there was a bit of a time constraint, the grade were adjusted accordingly and fairly given the grade distributions and average grades on each question

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