[944] Midterm solutions, homework and reciations

[Gautam Iyer]

Dear All,

There will be no homework due Thursday next week. There will also be no
recitation yesterday.

I have put the midterm and solutions online. Unfortunately there was an
problem with the last question that I didn't catch in time. Namely, my
intention was to ask you to compute

    E( M^2 | F_s )

However, on the exam I asked you to compute

    E( M^4 | F_s )

instead, making the problem much much harder. I suspect this happened
because pressing "Control A" in my editor (Vim) increments the nearest
number by 1. I was editing the midterm remotely over the weekend, and I
do this under "screen". Here pressing "Control A" starts switching
windows. Somehow through my "keyboard-fu" I pressed Control A twice in
the wrong context resulting in printing M^4 instead. Since the exam was
4 days later, it was enough time for me to forget my original intention,
and I didn't catch this mistake when proof reading the exam. As a
result,  the last problem was much harder than I had intended.

To ensure you are graded fairly I will do the following:

    1. In the solutions I have outlined how I will assign partial credit
       on the last question.

    2. I envision that the average score under this rubric will still be
       lower than it would have been with the original question. If it
       is, I will lower the grade cutoffs so that your letter grade on
       this exam is not affected. (I will release the approximate grade
       cutoffs once the exam is graded.)

Sorry for any trouble this might have caused. I will ensure that your
letter grade is not affected.

Best,

Gautam

PS: I will also update the solutions over the weekend to include common
    errors that were found while grading.

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