ECE 204 Numerical methods

Writing either a mid-term or final examination requires skills separate from just understanding the course material. This may not be ideal, but it is simply not possible to give, for example, oral examinations to each student.

In general on an examination, not all questions are equally difficult. There are questions that test background material, and there are questions meant to seriously challenge students. If you spend all your time on challenging questions, you may fail the examination even if you an understanding of the bulk of the material. Here are some thoughts:

1. Look at what the examination is out of, and thus you should be able to estimate approximately how much time you should spend on each question. A final examination lasts 150 minutes, so if the examination is out of 50, then you should focus on three minutes per mark (3 min/m), and if the examination is out of 100, then there is approximately 1.5 min/m. Mid-term examinations tend to be approximately 75 minutes.
2. Use the first five minutes to read through all the questions. This helps because:
   • It helps you identify the easier questions right from the start, and you can quickly complete those. Indeed, in this step, if you know it will take you less than 30 seconds to write down the answer, go for it.
   • It also helps you identify the hard questions, and this helps in two ways: first, you don't spend time on them right at the start; but also second, your mind is at least starting to think about those questions in the background.
   If you recall from your previous examinations, you may remember that in the last half hour, you really are only focusing on small incremental improvements or part marks. Instead, use five of those minutes to familiarize yourself with the entire examination at the start.
3. Consider the following strategy: as you read through each question on your first pass, put an "E", "M", "H" for easy, moderate, and hard, which is an estimate as to how difficult the question is. Also, put the expected number of minutes next to the question so that you can quickly refer to that number by multiplying the marks for that question by the marks-per-minute rate. For example, an easy 2-mark question where the examination is out of 50 could be annotated as "E/6" indicates easy and I should spend only six minutes on this question while hard 10-mark question on the same examination would be annotated with "H/30".
4. If you see a question that you simply know you cannot do, just cross it out somehow. If, for example, you did not even look at the boundary-value problem section in the course material, and there is a boundary-value question, just cross it out and don't waste your time on it.
5. Don't go over the min/m limit for the first hour. If there is a 3 mark question, and you have calculated 3 min/m, then don't spend more than 9 minutes on the question: go to another question. As a bonus, while you are doing other questions, your mind will never-the-less be considering an answer to this question in the background, so when you come back to it, you may already have a better solution.
6. If you have answered all the easy and moderate questions, and you are having difficulty answering some of the hard questions, write down a few thoughts.
7. Circle phrases in a question that limit what is being asked for; for example, is there a significant error in the data.
8. Have some way of flagging that a question is, in your opinion, completed. For example, you can cross out the question number, or put two slashes at the bottom right of the question: something so that when you are stepping through the examination, you know you don't have to look at that solution again.
9. Always answer a question that asks something like "Is this true?" even if it requires a justification. If you're wrong, then you get zero, but if you're right, you may get at least part marks even if you did not require a justification.
10. If you think your question is incorrect, do not use white-out or an eraser, but rather, just cross out the incorrect answer. This serves a double purpose: perhaps your first solution was indeed correct, and your actual solution was wrong because you included an incorrect assumption, or a misunderstanding. The instructor may still give you part marks. Also, if you realize your "wrong" answer is actually correct, you can add a comment: "Please mark the this crossed out solution!"
11. In the last half hour, if there are no more questions that you know you can answer correctly, at least try to add educated guesses for those that you do not have the answer to.

Also, for a Crowdmark examination, ask yourself it is worth printing off the questions in the first minutes while you read through the questions. Some students are better with the questions on a piece of paper, which allows the student to view more than just one screen at a time. Also, if you answer all the questions on a single page, you can then discard that page and focus on only those pages that have questions you have not yet answered. Also, before the examination starts, consider having ten to twenty pages prepared that have the question numbers in the top-left corner. This may be a waste of paper, but you can then, for example:

• Place any completed questions in a separate pile, so that you don't have to look at those questions anymore.
• Throw away any questions that you know you don't have an answer for, so that once again, you don't have to look at those questions again.

With one solution per page, you can then make additional marks or comments on that page regarding your solution to that question.

If you don't like my suggestions, Google examination writing skills or Bing examination writing skills.