(Latest Revision: Wed May 8, 2019)
Ideas for Studying for The Final
- The final will be a comprehensive test covering chapters 1-10 and 13-14.
The sections will be covered more or less equally. Previous finals have had
around 40-45 questions, so that allows for an average of about 3.75 questions
per chapter. In the past there have tended to be slightly more questions
on chapters nearer the end of the book than the beginning of the book,
and slightly more questions on chapters on which we spent more class time.
- As preparation for ultimately taking the final, of course it's good
during the entire semester to do all the assigned reading on time,
to make notes on what you read and what is said and done in class,
to chase down answers to your questions, and to study for the quizzes.
- The purpose of the final is to get an idea of whether you've retained
major aspects of the course content. So I'll try to ask questions that are
about things that are memorable, not about obscure details. Of course, how
we define "memorable" and "obscure" is subjective.
- The final will be similar to what we would get if we took a set of quizzes
like the ones you took during the semester, and edited it down from 72 questions
to 40-45. When doing the editing, I'd try to keep just the questions that I think
are about "central" things, and also ones that you'd be likely to remember
from my lectures and/or your studies.
- If I were studying for the final, I might begin by skimming through
the study guide that is posted in the class web space. This guide is
an overview of the text (ninth edition) provided by the authors.
I'd scan through it, looking for the things on which "Professor Sarraille" spent a
significant amount of time. I'd read over those things, trying to get whatever
helpful insights they could give me. I think doing this could help students
gather up a lot of info that could help them organize their knowledge
and thoughts on the range of topics in the course.
I would NOT spend very much time on any one topic there. If something started
to get difficult to grasp, I would think about it only for a limited time and then move
on to another topic. Also, I would NOT spend much time looking at a thing in the
study guide about which "Professor Sarraille" did NOT talk much,
unless I was very interested in it for some reason.
- After a scan of the study guide, I'd move on to
the course notes. I'd try to skim through those, looking for things
I remembered were covered on the quizzes, and I'd review those things and
the closely-related information. I'd probably go to the text to see what
it says about some of the topics, especially the ones that seem to
be quite important.
- That's it. I'd probably do something like that. "Your mileage may vary."