[944] Midterm

[Gautam Iyer]

Hi All,

We will have use of both rooms for the midterm tomorrow. Please use both
rooms and space yourselves out.

Reminder:

    1. We have office hours today (see times below)

    2. Bring a calculator (see rules below)

    3. The exam is closed book, no formula sheets. (See syllabus/rules
       below)

Also, since some of you have asked: I won't post solutions to questions
that I didn't solve in Lecture 7; however, we would be happy to solve
any questions you are curious about during office hours.

Best,

Gautam

On Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 04:46:57PM -0500, Gautam Iyer wrote:

> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Next week we will have office hours at the following times:
> 
>     Monday 12:00-1:00 (on Zoom)
>     Monday  5:30-6:30 (on Zoom)
> 
> The midterm will be on Tuesday (closed book, in class, see below).
> Please bring a calculator (see restrictions below). I've put up
> solutions to HW3, extra practice problems and three previous midterms. I
> strongly recommend practicing by doing problems (without looking at the
> solutions), and then checking your answers.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Gautam
> 
> On Sat, Nov 05, 2022 at 04:27:58PM -0400, Gautam Iyer via mscf-944 wrote:
> 
>> Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2022 16:27:58 -0400
>> From: Gautam Iyer via mscf-944 <gi1242+944 at cmu.edu>
>> To: mscf-944 at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
>> Subject: [944] Midterm
>> 
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> We have a midterm on Tue Nov 15th, in class. It will be closed book
>> exam.
>> 
>> Syllabus: The exam will cover everything we have done in class, up to
>> and including Itô's formula. I will do a few more examples of Itô's
>> formula in class on Tuesday, and then I will spend Thursday doing a
>> review.
>> 
>> Calculators: Please bring a calculator to the exam. I will follow the
>> same policy recommended by other MSCF math instructors. Your calculator
>> must not have electronic communications capabilities, can not access the
>> internet, and can not read / store document files. (If you don't have a
>> calculator, please buy one. Simple calculators are available online for
>> about $10; probably you can get them for a similar price in local stores
>> as well.)
>> 
>> The main goal of the exam is to give you an idea of how well you
>> understand the material. With mathematical courses such as this one, one
>> common trap is believing you understand the material because you can
>> follow along in lecture, or read the books / notes. This is very
>> different from being able do problems yourself! So I strongly recommend
>> you practice doing problems, without looking at the solutions.
>> 
>> There will be no proofs on the exam. All proofs I do, or ask you to do
>> on homework, are only to help you understand the material. All questions
>> on your midterm will ask you to "compute something", and will have a
>> clear answer (either numerical or symbolic).
>> 
>> The questions on the exam will not be repeats of problems you've seen
>> before; but will use ideas you've seen before. Since the midterm only
>> tests a few basic tools, students usually find it easier to do well on
>> the midterm in comparison to the final. For example, last year about
>> half the class got an A on the midterm, but only about 40% got an A on
>> the final. (This is just for your information only: There are no grade
>> quotas; if your performance on the exam demonstrates a solid
>> understanding of the required material, you will get an A. I recall one
>> year where almost 60% of the students ended with an A- or higher.)
>> 
>> For you to practice:
>> 
>>     1. I will put up midterms and solutions from the last three years on
>>        this years website. (If you want more midterms, you can go to
>>        last years website and look at the midterms from there. I won't
>>        put up those solutions though. Also the syllabus of this course
>>        was different in 2020, and didn't include the Binomial model.)
>> 
>>     2. On Thursday (after HW3 is due), I will put up an optional
>>        homework. While this homework will not be due, the problems are
>>        good practice, and some of them will be on the next homework (due
>>        Nov 22).
>> 
>> As you can see from previous exams, there are a few questions that you
>> can do directly from the basics (compute conditional expectations, Itô
>> decomposition, quadratic variation, etc.). There is usually a question
>> or two that requires some thought on how to do the computation. (For
>> example, look at question 3 on last years midterm: A brute force
>> computation will get you the answer, but will take an unreasonably long
>> amount of time. But a few minutes of thinking gives a short and elegant
>> solution.)
>> 
>> Office hours next week are the same; though I have to leave a bit early
>> after class on Tuesday, so I may not be able to take too many questions.
>> On Thursday, I will teach from New York. I will be in the NY office
>> until about 3PM so if you have questions you can stop by after lunch.
>> 
>> The week of the midterm we will hold office hours on Monday at a time
>> that will be announced shortly.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Gautam
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> They say hard work never hurt anybody, but why take the chance.
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>> mscf-944 at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
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> 
> -- 
> Reading while sunbathing makes you well-red.
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