OT - MSU's Calc II Final
I hope this amuses all of the other Michigan students reading this as much as it amuses me. As we pull all-nighters that end in carving our eyeballs out with sporks because it hurts less than studying sufficiently for our exams, the kids in Couch Fire Land get to take a Calc II final that is easier than our Calc I Gateway Test. I kid you not. Here is the proof:
http://www.math.msu.edu/~parker/133/PracticeFinal1_133.pdf
For reference, here is the last final exam from Michigan's equivalent class: http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/courses/116/Exams/n2011fall/Final_Exam/co…
I guess that's the difference in academic quality between a top-15 school and a a top-75 school. HAIL!
April 19th, 2012 at 12:25 PM ^
Isn't Calc II one of the most failed classes at UM? I remember taking the applied honors version (Math 156?), which was still a b*tch, but not nearly as bad as what everyone else took.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:27 PM ^
I actually got a better grade in calc-II than I got in calc-I ...I think my priorities changed slightly between the two classes.
Calc II beat my ass...I worked harder for that class than any other, including Orgo I and II and Biochem
during Calc II and missed a week of class. I dropped from a 97 to an 82. Thank God is was late in the term or I would have been toast.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:35 PM ^
156 was better since it was small classes where you could ask a lot more questions. The individual GSIs/profs also had a lot more leinency on grading. My prof/gsi said if you best grade was the final he'd give you that for the semester, and if not, he'd average them for you.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:26 PM ^
Trying to find you upcoming exam online? That rarely works, I’m afraid. This is mostly high school math though. Are you sure it’s Calc II? Maybe they number their courses differently?
April 19th, 2012 at 12:31 PM ^
This is not the exam they are taking this term, but a practice exam from a past term. Math 133 is the MSU equivalent of Michigan's Math 116; both are Calc II. http://www.math.msu.edu/~parker/133/
April 19th, 2012 at 12:28 PM ^
For comparative purposes, here's one UM Calc II final:
http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/courses/116/Exams/k2010winter/Final_Exam/copy/FinalExamW10Sol.pdf
April 19th, 2012 at 12:40 PM ^
Gross - that brought back some bad memories. I got an A- in Calc II at UM in 2006 and can safely say that I would struggle to answer a single one of those correctly today. Hooray for Med School.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:30 PM ^
I didn't take any math classes at M. I stopped at Algebra II in high school.
Mgomathmoron
April 19th, 2012 at 12:30 PM ^
My freshman year at Michigan when I took Calc 2, one of the questions had to do with density of squirrels on the diag with the density being highest over my the chem building or something. Based on the equation, it was like 1600 squirrels per square foot in that corner of the diag.
Also, I got a 64 on that exam which was still an A- because the average was a 48.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:32 PM ^
I thought you were talking about the density of the squirrels themselves, i.e., their collective mass over volume, when I first read that. I wondered whether AA has particularly dense squirrels.
I was wondering why the squirrels near the Chem building were so dense.
They didn't have great upbringings. Nobody really encouraged them to expand their horizons.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:32 PM ^
I mean. There isn't a whole lot to say on this subject. Michigan is a better school than Michigan State.
If anyone does care, I do have some anecdotal evidence. I know someone who went to MSU and then transferred to UM. He said he had to work about four times as many hours to maintain the same grades he was receiving at MSU.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:32 PM ^
Wow that is a joke. I remeber my Second Midterm's average was a 34 out of 100.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:33 PM ^
Just took my Calc II exam a few hours ago. Let me tell you, it was loads of fun. I have no doubt in my mind that I could have taken that MSU test in high school and done just fine.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:37 PM ^
granted I went to a specialized mathematics school but still... MSU is hilarious. Gonna pass this on to my old teachers for sure.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:34 PM ^
Which may be different. Also note that you can't use a calculator and doesn't give any prior info.
Pretty much all schools teach the same stuff as far as Math classes, so really there isn't much of a difference. Their exam is probably a little easier, but in the end it's all application of the same stuff.
That is also one prof's practice final, different prof's probably have easier/harder exams.
Lastly, I hate these "Haha, look how pathetic school xx is, they have it so easy, we have it so hard" crap. Just take pride in that you know Michigan has a great school. I never understood worrying about or trying real hard to point stuff like this out. Just makes you look like a douche.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:40 PM ^
Reposting something hilarious regarding finals on finals week =/= "trying real hard" or "worrying" about anything, and calling someone a douche for supplying exam-plagued students with some entertainment makes you a fantastical asshat.
currently struggling to comprehend this material for my computer architecture final tomorrow, I'm going to agree with Space Coyote. Comparing practice tests is fairly foolish. Hell you can't even compare classes semester to semester anymore (see: EECS 203).
At the end of the day the reason why our experiences with things like calculus are so much more painful than an MSU student's is more to do with the students we're competing with against the curve and less to do with the material itself. If they administered an easy calculus final at UM, the average would be a 95 and unless you learned every little detail you'd fail.
I echo Space Coyote's sentiments: just take solace in the fact that you go to a great school and let the job market sort out the rest.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I never had a class curved to a Normal Curve. I only had classes the curved up. Either that or all the exams I took were written so well that they were distributed like a normal curve and no competition was necessary.
FTR: Majored in Comp Sci, minored in Math.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:54 PM ^
Well, in more practical classes (read: using the material after college), this kind of thing matters. I went to grad school for engineering at top 50 school (better than MSU) and TA'd classes that I took as an undergrad at a top 20 school (almost as good as Michigan).
There was a shocking difference in difficulty and hand-holding. In the top 20 school, you were required to figure things out on your own with very little help. If you couldn't figure it out during a lab, then you fail, so you better understand what you are doing prior to showing up for the lab and be prepared to do what you had to do. As a TA, at the top 50 school, I was 'required' to answer any question that students had, so labs became a long series of 'what do I do next' requiring no preparation or thought by the students.
Let's just say that one place teaches you to think for yourself and the other teaches you how to do what other people tell you to do and leave it at that.
I do have to disagree with the "same math" comment. I've heard that applied to a variety of applications from engineering to math to medicine, and when I've visited those schools (as a young prof I've looked at a lot of different curricula in a few fields), I've never actually found it to be true.
Two calculus classes, in this example, will both teach the same general concepts, but at a top school they're taught at a much deeper level. The expectation isn't "be able to do this" it's "be able to understand this." The assignments aren't "repeat what we did in class" but instead "apply that same idea in a totally different way." There really is a remarkable difference.
The big difference of Michigan compared to MSU, or any other school for that matter, isn't what they teach you. They all pretty much teach you the concepts you need to know. The difference is how the students learn it. It's like when someone says "you'll take out of this however much you put in", well at Michigan they tend to force you to learn it.
I'm not trying to say the schools are equal, they aren't, but I've met MSU grads who are better prepared for the real world than Michigan grads. I've met MSU grads that are smarter than Michigan grads. It's rare, but it happens.
In the end I still don't get the looking down on someone else rather than taking pride in what you do. That's my biggest peeve with all this.
April 19th, 2012 at 11:12 PM ^
I hear you, but I still disagree. I've taught at schools at different levels (further apart than Michigan-State, more like Michigan-Western) and it really does have a huge impact on what you actually teach in the class. As a prof, you have to teach to roughly the median student in the class. If students are grappling with procedural learning, that's what you have to spend your time on, even if there are some great students in the class. If you can assume that students will learn the procedural stuff with less instruction, you get to focus on more challenging concepts.
There are no doubt many examples of State grads smarter than Michigan grads (several smarter than me, I'm sure, though not as many as Michigan grads smarter than me), and many of them will get the theory even though the classroom teaching is more procedural. Likewise, there are plenty of students at Michigan who are being taught theory and will struggle just to get the procedural learning. However, the difference between typical students has an impact on teaching and that top State student probably would have gotten significantly more out of the Michigan class.
Actually, in context, school xx would in fact be school x^2, the derivative of which Calc II Spartan students would be unable to compute based on their substandard practice exams.
Haha, look how pathetic they are.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:37 PM ^
April 19th, 2012 at 12:39 PM ^
What's crazy is that as someone who got an A in honors calc 2 9 years ago at Michigan, I don't know if I could answer any of those questions. Mostly because I haven't done an integral or derivative in 7 years and forget all the special rules. But I do know that those questions would be just the simplification part of a much longer problem on the final I took 9 years ago.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:38 PM ^
I remember when I knew what those symbols meant. Calc II was my last math class and I'd like to keep that buried thank you very much.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:42 PM ^
The MSU one is easier by far but while the Michigan one is difficult, all the problems seem doable and I haven't taken Calc for about a year and half.
Edit: Actually there are some problems on the Michigan one with which I wouldn't know what to do.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:41 PM ^
Despite having a Michigan B.S. in Chemical Engineering, an MBA, and a CFA there's apparently a LOT I've forgotten about Calculus in the last 20 years. When I was in school 115 was cake and 116 wasn't too hard if I recall. NOW? Bridges would be collapsing everywhere. Use it or lose it, I guess...
April 19th, 2012 at 12:45 PM ^
Hahaha, I too have a B.S. in ChE and I feel the same way (see below comment).
April 19th, 2012 at 12:44 PM ^
Love how they call it a can of pop even on an official final exam. People would look at me as if I was speaking Swahili if I said that here.
Oh man, brings back good memories of carcurus at Michigan. Anyone else remember the Asian guy who worked in the department with a mole on his face with an obscene amount of hair growing from it? He proctored my gateway tests, and I tried as hard as I could to avoid staring...
Moo U's exam looks leaps and bounds easier, but even as an engineering Ph.D. student, I wouldn't want to do some of those problems on there. OUT OF PRACTICE.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:51 PM ^
The midterm of my Calc II UM class had an average score of 53/100. I got a few points above that. I would get a 85% at MSU judging by the difference in exams. Shocking really, just proves that the majority of American universities aren't actually challenging their students. No one is naturally good at Calc, it is all in the work you put into it (or are forced to put into it). Now I understand how my friends who went to other (I won't name them) schools described how they worked slightly harder than they did in high school.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:56 PM ^
John Nash does not believe you!
No one is naturally good at Calc, it is all in the work you put into it (or are forced to put into it).
Calculus is easier for some than others. I did pretty well in all my mathematics courses all the way up to and including Diff Eq (EE here), but I have friends that failed out and just couldn't grasp and or retain the concepts regardless of how much I tried to help them.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:54 PM ^
Here is MIT's Calc 1 final. This course combines calc 1 and 2 into a single semester so you can imagine the pace difference.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-01sc-single-variable-calculus…
This was over 15 years ago and I still remember it. In that problem, you had to write a multiple integral to calculate the volume of a capsule pill where the rounded ends were not perfect half spheres (they were like the 3-d version of a chord, if that makes any sense). I fricking racked my brain on that shit for probably a quarter of the exam and I ended up with some bastardization that was half in cylindrical coordinates (for the cylinder part of the capsule) and half in spherical coordinates (for the rounded ends). It was bad, wrong, horribly dumb, but I just couldn't figure it out. I got a "nice try."
This is almost the same problem and it's on a Calc I/II test.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:55 PM ^
Those exams bring back some painful memories. I placed out of calc I, and didn't end up taking calc II or III until I was a senior... One or two aderol enhanced study sessions were required to relearn a lot of the material. I remember hating Taylor series', all current students have my sympathy.
April 19th, 2012 at 12:57 PM ^
Calc II was the most difficult class I ever passed. Elec. Circuits Analysis was the hardest class I have ever taken.
I got an A in both Calc II and Calc III at U-M but I would be screwed right now on either of those exams. The MSU one looks easier and would probably take less time for me to figure out, but I sure have forgotten a lot since I took those classes in 2001-2002. Scheisse.
Michigan's motto: if you aren't crying after taking the exam, they haven't been pushing you hard enough.
In fairness to MSU, the comparisons of the tests are fairly meaningless. A test that results in scores in the appropriate range (which I'm assuming the State one does) is going to always look much, much easier than one that results in dismal scores that must be curved way up. That doesn't automatically reflect poorly on the students taking the easier test any more than dismal test scores at Michigan reflect poorly on those students. (That doesn't totally invalidate the observation that it's an easy test, however, just that the comparison doesn't mean much.)
So glad I passed out of Calc II at Michigan. I remember breezing through Calc III and IV. Meanwhile, half of my friends were tearing their eyes out while earning an "A" with a whopping 42% on the Calc II final.
While I understand the point the OP is getting at, the MSU test at hand is from 2001 while the UM example is from 2011. Now I realize that it is supposedly a practic test for this year as stated by the OP, but we have no idea of the source. First, it could be no way correlated to this year's test, and secondly, if this years practice test, the practice test may be nothing like the real one. MSU's academics has gone up drastically since 2001.
but if it's a current practice test.. then what's good does it do if it doesn't reflect the level of difficulty of the real test? The practice test looks like something that I could've probably passed in HS 20+ years ago after my AP calculus test.
Sweet, employers love this kind of shit.
The nice thing about being older, and having once taken this and more complex math courses as an engineering student, is that you can't solve a single problem on either test and not give a crap.
The worst thing about being older is looking at this exam, remembering that you once had to take something like it, and being pissed that so much time spent studying for (and failing) that test had absolutely no impact on your current career.