MAT 101M: Mathematics for the 21st Century

Fall 2018

Exam 1 information

1. Notes and materials

You are permitted one letter-size handwritten notes sheet (both sides) for use as a reference during the exam.

The following reference tables, if needed, will be provided to you. It might be provided exactly as in the textbook, abbreviated, or include similar, but not the same, information.

• Table 2.1 USCS
• Table 2.2 Common Metric Prefixes
• Table 2.3 USCS–Metric Conversions
• Table 2.4 Sample Currency Exchange Rates
• Table 3.1 Selected Energy Comparisons
• Table 3.4 CPI

Be sure you have your own scientific calculator (or graphing calculator) to use during the exam. You may want to bring spare batteries.

2. How to study

Lots of research has shown that reading over material isn't a very good way to prepare for exams. The best thing to do is to practice. Reading how to swing a baseball bat or how to cross-country ski might give you some good ideas on how to get better the next time you try it, but it's not even close to just getting out there and swinging a bat or skiing.

How can you practice? Go back to look at the assignments. Instead of reviewing the same problems you already did, try to do similar problems. For each type of question, do some odd-numbered ones in the textbook and check your answers in the back of the book.

Can you write down thoughts for all of the topics listed below? Can you invent questions to try for the topics listed below? Practice these under test conditions and see how you do. Even though the solutions may not be available, just trying to do them can be incredibly useful. You can work with other students to see if you think you've got the right answers. Even if you don't know for sure if you've got the right answer, just practicing with these exercises can be helpful.

Go back and pick out all of the content from class that you understand least well. Then, without simultaneously looking at your notes, write down all that you know about that content. Think about what I might ask you to do on an exam that would be scary. Try to do that yourself. If you can't, work with other people in the class or stop by Math Lab and office hours to get help on doing that.

Recall that it is against the academic integrity policy to seek out resources from past versions of this course or similar courses offered elsewhere. The textbook has more than enough practice problems.

3. Exam content

The exam covers everything we have done, up to and including Section 3D. (Section 4A will be on the next exam.) Here are some topics we emphasized:

• unit conversions (including temperature, currency)
• unit conversions with units that involve squaring, cubing, hyphens
• temperature conversions
• units of energy, power, density, concentration (besides the more commonly encountered units)
• percents
• absolute / relative change
• ratio comparisons
• absolute / relative difference
• percentages of percentages
• scientific notation
• order of magnitude and precision
• significant digits
• combining measured numbers
• index numbers
• inflation

As usual, please note that this document is not a contract. I may have inadvertently left something off that ends up on an exam question. Moreover, I will not be able to test all of this material given the time limitations of the exam. I will have to pick and choose some subset of it.