Quiz 2

Logistics

Quiz 2 will be on Thursday March 6th, in your officially-registered quiz section.

Please bring a photo ID with you to the quiz.

If you are unable to make that time due to a pre-existing scheduling conflict, please fill out this form by Sunday March 03.

If you are sick the day of the quiz, or need to isolate due to a possible COVID exposure do not come to the quiz. Send Robbie and the TAs for your section an email so we know why you're not there, and we will schedule makeup quizzes as needed. Similarly in the event of some other emergency (e.g., a car accident on your way to campus), send Robbie and your TA an email and we'll schedule a makeup or work on other arrangements (e.g., if you're available we might have you take the quiz with a later section).

Quiz Details

• We will provide a reference sheet with some of the most-used formulas. Here is that reference sheet (We will hand one of these to you with the quiz!)
• Some formulas on that sheet are not going to be tested on the quiz (we may not have even covered all of them in lecture by then). This is the same reference sheet we'll give you with the final; we hope providing you this one will make the quiz more useful as final prep.
• In addition, you will be allowed one piece of (8.5x11 inch) paper with handwritten notes. You may write notes on both sides of the paper.
• handwritten means either written by you on the piece of paper (with pen or pencil), or handwritten via technology (like an iPad) and printed, without doing anything you could not have done on regular pen and pencil
• For example, you cannot artificially shrink the size of your handwriting with an iPad, but you can use it to make erasing easier/neater.
• Similarly, you could not import pictures from lecture slides, but you can redraw them by hand.
• Scratch paper will be provided.
• You will have 25 minutes to take the quiz.

Content/Topics List

There will be Two main questions on the quiz:

1. A question on continuous random variable fundamentals. This question will have multiple parts, and may include things like
• Given a PDF, compute the probability of an event
• Given a CDF, compute the PDF
• Given a PDF, compute the expectation of a function of a random variable.
• And similar questions
2. A question on using normal distributions. This question will have multiple parts, and may include things like
• Using the Central Limit Theorem to approximate a distribution (including continuity correction)
• inverse questions (given a probability, find the input to the CDF that produces it)
• And similar questions
3. There may be small additional questions (say a few multiple choice/true-false questions)

The focus of the exam will be on content from lectures 14-17

While we won't focus on older content, it may still be covered indirectly. For example, you might have to use the complementation law to compute a probability, but we wouldn't ask you to solve a complicated stars-and-bars problem on this quiz.

We will not cover anything from lectures 18 and later (e.g., joint distributions)

Quiz Policies

You will not be allowed to use a calculator (or other electronic devices) during the quiz. We will ensure any math is possible without a calculator.

You will be expected to find derivatives/antiderivatives and plug in values.

We do not expect you to fully simplify final answers (as you don't have a calculator). Similar to homework, answers like 5!*17!/3! or C(5,3) are fine final answers.

Answers will be considered sufficiently simplified if someone who doesn't know calculus could compute the exact number with a calculator (so 2^2-3^2+7*3 is fine, but an integral is not)

Most problems will not require a formal explanation (unlike the homeworks), but explanations will help us award partial credit, so we strongly recommend including (at least) a few words here and there to help with partial credit.

How should I study?

There are no old quizzes (quizzes are a new experiment this quarter); we'll provide a sample practice quiz a few days before the real quiz for practice.

Extra section problems are an excellent source of practice; be sure to do the problem without looking at the solution first, don't just read the solutions (it's much easier to recognize a correct explanation than to generate one yourself!).

We strongly recommend looking at homework solutions (extras are available in Robbie's office) as modifications of homework problems are a common source of quiz and exam problems.

How does section participation work that day?

Since the quiz will only take about half the section time, the second half of the section will look like a regular section; working on problems to practice recent concepts.

If you want to leave after your quiz is collected, you may, and then can do the problems individually for credit as normal; you can also stay in the room for the last half to get credit in-person.

What if I'm late?

If you're just a minute or two late, you'll probably get there before the quiz starts (it will take a few minutes to hand out quizzes and get everyone settled). This should be enough time if you have a longer walk across campus or some other reason you might be a little late.

If you can't make it to your section within a few minutes of being on-time, you may want to request taking it with another section via the form.

Resources

Practice Quiz, Solutions