placement testing

[jinian]

Yay:
Algebra: 99
College algebra: 66
Standard reading: 99
Standard writing: 99

Huh?:
There is no 100. 99 is a perfect score.

ARGH:
They won't tell me which question I missed in the college algebra section and I can't figure it out! I thought maybe the one with the geometric series, but I looked up "common ratio" just now and I was right about what it was. Probably just some dumb computation error, grump.

They want me to take English 101, sheesh, and some dumb "applied math" course or pre-calculus. Pre-calculus, I ask you. I think they're just trying to get more money out of me. I want to review and was thinking of retaking Calc I, but come on. I guess I can see English 101 as being useful for resetting my mind into college-course paths, and math is fun even when it's easy. Maybe I'll just call this a practice quarter somehow.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Huh?:
There is no 100. 99 is a perfect score.

Probably those are percentile scores, reflecting the percentage of test-takers who scored lower than you rather than the percentage of items you got right.

Incidentally, since I'm not sure I've said so yet: Yay, you! for going back to school full-time.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I guess it's possible that they're percentile scores, but it doesn't feel right somehow. It's not very well explained anywhere.

And thank you! I'm starting to be really excited, especially comparing the thought of even an annoying class to this bloody job.

barging in with unsolicited advice

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

The "aplied math" thing is insane if you've already successfully taken calculus, as is English 101. You will be bored and you will waste money and time. Rattle some cages for a while, and see if they'll do something about that. Maybe you can contact instructors directly to see if one of them can pull some weight with the admin to get you into something more useful?

Hah! Be outrageous and suggest probability/stats as your intro to math. Or, well, something applicable to your major.

Man, I wish I was going back to school. I would *so* love to do that all over, untimid and inclined to hassle people until I got what I wanted. "What do you *MEAN* there's no humanities program here? Well, I guess you'll just have to actually coordinate the art and English and language departments and *MAKE* a program, won't you? And while you're at it, get me a donut."

Re: barging in with unsolicited advice

[(Anonymous)]

i'm with mittelschmertz here. rattle people's cages. don't take stupid things that you'll just sleep through.

Re: barging in with unsolicited advice

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

why did that post anonymously? it's me! it's me!

Re: barging in with unsolicited advice

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Wow, you are all smart and inspirational. I'm so bad at being assertive, but maybe by 2:30 Monday I can develop a diva persona to wear down there.

Re: barging in with unsolicited advice

[torquemada.livejournal.com]

...develop? ;)

Re: barging in with unsolicited advice

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[jenett]

I agree on the cage-rattling.

One thing that might help your cause is a writing sample or three. Heck, one of your longer LJ entries would probably do just fine as part of a sample (though if you have an old research paper or something, I'd bring that too, and ideally something involving literary analysis) if you can find one you like.

Basically, proof that you can write coherent English on the fly, proof you can do a formal paper, and proof you can do lit. analysis may well be enough to convince them that you should take something more interesting.

Re: barging in with unsolicited advice

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I haven't told you this story yet?

every quarter I get invited to take the math and english placement tests (and while I have a BA it's from a freak college w/o grades so they don't believe in me, plus I tested OUT of college english so NEVER TOOK IT) and every quarter I throw a little fit

the last one the employee had to say "you're not helping, you know" and I had to apologize

I think we used my master's writing class (ie, I never actually got my master's degree but I had credits towards working on it) as english and then maybe my GRE scores (or maybe a higher math class that I had to EXPLAIN was a higher math class) as math and I got so upset that the guy somehow signed off for more than just one quarter at a time

at one point he suggested I just TAKE the damn placement tests and get it over with and pretty much I said I was in my 30's, I'd been to grad school, and I wasn't going to take a test I could have passed before high school for a certificate program I was in for being out of work. (then I had to apologize coz I was being an elitist bitch, but it did make me feel better for a second and this quarter everything was magically already signed off for from last quarter)

so I'm sure you can be more gracious and get just as much done, go go go you, beurocracies just need persistence to crack open like a cocoanut.

Re: barging in with unsolicited advice

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

(a lot of this comes from the alternative college thing though where you have to talk to each professor each quarter about what you want and then coordinate with the advisor; the actual paper work and remembering which class is which number and how the sequence fits together I have almost no practice at and can get really lost with, like, wait, can't i just take it in whatever order I feel like it and have it reorganize itself in my head later?)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

If you've already taken a first course in calculus, know and can apply the 14 properties of real numbers, and solve trigonometric identities, then you have no business taking that refresher class. It'd be an easy A for you, but do you want to spend the $$$ for it?

I'd suggest a chat with the undergraduate advisor in the math department.

[eub.livejournal.com]

(Uh oh, the reals have fourteen properties?)

I'm with the crowd -- don't sit still for boredom. Seminar on combinatory logic, you know you want it.

If perfect reading and writing placement scores lead to English 101, I wonder why they have you take them. (Well, placement into the one- and two-digit English courses, I guess.)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I phrased that carelessly. There are 14 postulates of real numbers, though they're generally refered to as properties. Let's see how many I can remember...

Commutation with respect to addition, a+b = b+a

Commutation with respect to multiplication, ab = ba

Association, a + (b+c) = (a+b) + c

Distribution, a(b+c) = ab + ac

Additive identity zero: a+0=a

Multiplicative identity one: 1a = a

Rational identity one: a/a = 1

Negative identity: -1a = -a

Continuation: For any interval (a,c) there exists some real number, b which lies between a and c

And I'd have to crack open a book to tell you the rest right now. These postulates are so basic to algebra that we don't usually think about them.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Ah. Thanks.

I forget how all this foundational-type stuff works -- once the reals are constructed from the rationals, these can be demoted from postulates to properties?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's how it works. It's been a long time since I sat in that formal algebra class. I've yet to see a better treatment of the subject than in Abraham Spitzbart's textbook.

the reals

[hattifattener]

Hmmm. Closure with respect to these operations? The existence of multiplicative and additive inverses? Dunno how much of that you can derive from the axioms you just posted. I need to go get dinner.

Come to think of it, everything in that list applies to the rational numbers as well. Is there any way to get to the reals except as the limit of an infinite series? (Cantor's way-cool diagonal argument implicitly relies on infinite sums, so it wouldn't count.) I guess you can show that surds aren't rational numbers, but (rationals+surds) is still smaller than the reals.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

*cough* posts in here can sure get a girl,. uh, interested :)

Re: the reals

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Of the 14 axioms (aka postulates/properties), I think 12 apply to rational numbers, with two more necessary to cover irrational numbers as well. Closure is, as you note, another axiom of the set of real numbers. The set is closed with respect to multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. If you introduce a 15th axiom requiring closure with respect to all operations, you get complex numbers. Real irrational numbers are, as you note, the consequence of infinite series and the property of continuity.

Anything more about this should wait until monday, when I'll have access to the textbooks in my office. (I'm an astronomer, so math was my 1st minor, but it's not what I teach.)

Re: the reals

[eub.livejournal.com]

Is there any way to get to the reals except as the limit of an infinite series?

The ways I remember are that one (Cauchy sequences (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CauchySequence.html)), and Dedekind cuts (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DedekindCut.html) (which always tasted more intuitive to me).

I guess the properties specific to the reals would include something like closure under lim(Cauchy sequence). Then what would another non-redundant real-specific property be?