FAQ

I do not accept more students than the capacity of the room and I do not want to overload my sections. People usually drop during the first week, so I advice you to keep checking regularly if there is an open spot. Regardless of when you register, you are expected to do the regular work of the class on time, this includes homework and possibly quizzes.

Some advice about the etiquette of writing emails to instructors.

• Please be courteous with your instructor, write a proper Header and don't forget to sign at the end.
• Write your name and course you are emailing about.
• Write a Subject that correspond to the content. Do not reply an email that has a subject that in unrelated to the topic. (I always have a lot of emails under replies with unrelated topic. For instance I've had people emailing about regrades under the subject "Quiz Reminder". Doing this, it is very likely that emails get lost and are never responded.)
• Be specific on the email, for example when writing an email about a regrade specify the thing that need a regrade, (quiz, hw, midterm) the original grade and the final grade. Do not say things like "remember to change my grade" without any more information.
• When asking about a homework problem write down the problem statement (maybe in a summarized way). The instructor most likely doesn't carry the book around with him/her all the time so he/she cannot check the problem if you just tell him/her the number. Explain exactly where are you having problems with the exercise so that it is easier to respond, it also helps you to understand what you are having difficulties at.

I also found a very fun blog that talks about this as well, take a look.

If I receive an e-mail, I will try to answer it in 24 hours. If your e-mail consists of a question, and I happen to talk to you about the matter and to answer your question before answering the e-mail, I will not reply to your e-mail (since it would simply be a repetition of what I said to you in person). If you prefer to have also a written answer, you should tell me.

One of the most difficult part of doing an exam it the time constrain. The best way to study for an exam is to time yourself and to try to do problems in less than 10 mins each without using the book or looking at solutions until you are done.

When writing an exam I then take the exam and time myself. I do the exam carefully with everything written nice and with every detail. Then I make sure that it takes me one third of the time to that it should take the students to write it up. For example a 50 min exam should take me from 16-17 mins to do.

When doing practice exams or problems, if you still feel like there wasn't enough time, perhaps you want to reevaluate your studying and test taking strategies. I am more than glad to help you with tips on that and to have a 1-1 talk with you about it.

One other reason for felling like you don't have enough time could be that you are approaching the problems using a method which is not the most efficient. Always try to think if there is a better shorter way, another technique that we learned in class that can answer the question in a more efficient way.

Here is a link with tips on taking timed exams. Here is another link with exams taking strategies in general.

Here is a standard conversion table from percentage to GPA. This table is meant to give you an idea on a lower bound for your GPA given your percentage in the class. If you want to aim for a certain grade I suggest to assume that this is the conversion I will use that way you will get the grade you want or even higher. Note that this is a very strict table and I always curve. That means that for your final grade your percentage will correspond to a higher GPA than the one on the table. How much higher will depend on the overall class performance.