midterm

I know, you are all very concerned about my midterm, and you should be ... because it was a damn hard exam! You can have a look at it here. And I have the results too!

Professor got really surprised about how poorly the class performed (I wonder why): the highest grade was a 75%, the lowest was a 5%. The average was 28% :) And I should remind you that I'm talking of a universe of bright young graduate students (all but myself) coming from all parts of the world. All graduated top of their schools, but in this course, people just crashed!

As I told you the exam was pretty difficult and long too. In my humble opinion much harder than any past years' exams. Now that I look back, I can't avoid a smile when I think about the day we were taking the midterm: the Professor sat down at his desk and started doing it; he barely finished the exam on time (~1h20), and he got the last part wrong :)
He told us during the exam that he was not expecting us to complete the whole thing, we should just concentrate and try to do it to the best of our knowledge. He would be lenient on partial credit, he said.

A good thing about most of the schools in the US (UCSD included) is that professors usually curve the grades. Basically this means that they are expecting X% of the students to have an A, Y% to have a B, and so on... So when this sort of collective crashes happen the grades suffer some inflation. Uff... Thank God!
By this time you're probably wonder why I look so amused when writing about this catastrophe. Well the reason is simple: I had 45%, and all things considered this was a pretty good grade. I'm not happy with it, in particular because I do feel that I've grasped the material on the course, and know better than that; but looking at the overall class performance this was not a bad grade.

In case some of my dear readers are interested in going through the midterm, you can find a solution here. But please, put some real effort before looking at the solutions :)
Enjoy!

PS- about the midterm I particularly like the footnotes

full speed ahead!

As a student I was always the kind of guy that prepared ahead for trouble to come. This was my way of being, but I also wanted to avoid those stressful nights before the exams. Here at UCSD, however, I have been forced to do both :) Not only I need to prepare the course material at an early stage, but I'm also bound to study until the very last hour before the exam. There is really no other way to do it. At least one that works for me! And speaking of the devil, I have a midterm next Thursday!

Fortunately the courses I wanted to do are almost done. After the two I'm taking right now, I only expect to take one more in the Winter quarter. Unless my adviser suggests some more, I'm not thinking to take any other courses. Although I have to admit I've learned a lot just by taking courses, there is no doubt that, in the way they're taught, they tend to consume a lot of time...
Oh well, that's life! Or at least grad-life, and nobody said it was perfect.

private joke

Não resisti à tentação de publicar esta pequena performance de alguns funcionários públicos da autarquia de Portimão(?). Especialmente dedicada a alguns amigos...
Prestem atenção à letra; sobretudo àquela parte em que fala sobre os objectivos :)
Afinal a diferença entre o público e o privado não é tão grande assim!