Course Exams

Note: More information will be added as the exam dates near

First Exam (the Quiz): Monday Feb. 23rd, in class

The first exam is not serious (only worth 5% of your final grade), but the point is to give you a chance to examine your mastery of the subject before the Feb. 27 drop date. However, bear in mind that much of the material after the drop date becomes considerably more abstract than the material before.

Content: Homeworks 1 through 4. Principally: solving systems of linear equations, matrices and linear transformations, matrix operations and isometries in the plane. The format will include true/false and some computationally simple exercises.

Second Exam (the Midterm): Friday March 13, in class

The second exam will cover everything to date in the course, more specifically, the material covered on the quiz in addition to Sections 4.1 through 4.6 in the text. Much of the material from Sections 4.2 to 4.5 is covered in Homeworks 5 & 6. In addition, I have made a sheet of

Practice Problems

for you to try. Please try and complete these before class on Wed Mar 11. That class there will be no lecture, and I will just answer any questions you have for me, from the Homeworks, the Quiz and the practice problems. NOTE: The practice problems are NOT representative of the material covered on the exam. They are there to help give you more practice with the recent lecture material, and thus do not cover much material from before Section 4.3. In other words, you should review your old homeworks and quiz in addition to working on the practice problems.

You may check your answers to the practice problems with my

Practice Problem Solutions.

If you find any errors in the solutions, please let me know so that I can correct them. (3/12: Corrected #15)

Final Examination: Monday May 11, 1:30-3:30pm

The final exam is cumulative. Key topics are:

Solving Systems of Linear Equations
Theory of Vector Spaces (vector spaces, subspaces, span, linear independence, basis, dimension)
Theory of Linear Transformations (image, kernel, rank, nullity, eigenvalues, eigeigenvectors, eigenspaces)
Applications (change of basis, diagonalization, exponentiation, dynamical systems [e.g., population dynamics], Markov processes [e.g. weather prediction, Google Pagerank])
(Symmetric and orthogonal matrices are very important in terms of applications, however they will not be specifically addressed on the exam.)

I suggest you review these concepts and check that you understand them by attempting many problems. To review the first half of the course material, I recommend you go through your previous two exams and the midterm practice problems. (My present guess is that 1/3 to 1/2 of the final will be on the material up to Exam 2.) To review the second half of the course material, go over old homework problems since the second exam and try the

Final Exam Practice Problems

My suggestion is that you study before trying the problems and treat it like a practice test. Note these problems mostly focus on the second half of the course, as you have plenty of review material already for the first half. They are not a substitute for reviewing your old exams and midterm practice problems (if you are okay with these, I would not bother with looking at HWs 1-6 again), however they do include questions designed to help you put the whole course, from beginnning to end, in perspective.

Afterwards, you may check your solutions with mine:

Final Exam Practice Solutions (Corrected #6. Please let me know of any other errors.)

Any questions you have you may send to my math.ou.edu email address or ask me in Friday office hours or Monday before the exam. (I plan to be in my office for about an hour beforehand.) Good luck!