Homework Comments


Assignment 1 (due Friday 8-29-08)
"Most students had trouble with #34 (what it means to show that a triangle is a right triangle) and #72."



Assignment 2 (due Friday 9-5-08)
"Many students did not do the quiz problem. They also had trouble with 70 from section 1.2, 112 from section 1.3 (many drew the parallelogram, but did not show opposite sides were parallel) and 54 from 2.1. Also, about half the students got points taken off for not stapling."



Assignment 3 (due Friday 9-12-08)
"The only problem that a lot of people seemed to miss was the quiz problem. About half the students didn't do it, and very few people got it completely correct."



Assignment 5 (due Friday 9-26-08)
"One of the main problems I saw was with the worksheet problem 3d. Many people plugged in the equations the wrong way; that is, they plugged the bottom equation into the top one, but the bottom equation has an x in it, so you can't reduce it down to one variable."

"On the worksheet, people also had problems with the completing the square question (6c). Many assumed that you could set the equation equal to zero, even though this is not stated in the problem. But most people did get the complete the square question on the quiz correct."

"One thing that I noticed in the homework is that many people do not label their graphs - most do tick marks, but it's really hard to read if the graph hits at the correct tick mark. I didn't take points off (unless it was really unlegible), but I made a note that they should label the graphs." Note: from now on, points will be taken off for unlabeled graphs.



Assignment 6 (due Friday 10-3-08)
"People, overall, did well on the quiz. Many more people did it than usual. The biggest problem there was on part f."

"There was also a few problems on the algebra review sheet. People did very well for parts 1 and 2, but had trouble with 3e. It seemed like mostly algebraic errors that compounded, but a good handfull of people did not get a common denominator in the correct manor. There was also some trouble with question 4 - some people, for example, said in 4a that 'the 2x should cancel, not just the 2'. There was a similar problem with 4d."

"With regard to the book problems, people did pretty well, except with 60. While many people answered the question correctly, they did not explain the answer, or the explanation was wrong."

Assignment 7 (due Friday 10-10-08)
"The only problems that I saw on this homework was with problems 46 and 48 of 4.4; many people, with 46, stated that the domain could include  everything but  -4, when in reality, the number in the square root had to be greater than or equal to 0."

"People also had trouble with numbers 28 and 40 in 5.1, where you had to say what the domain of two composed functions was. For example, in 28, some people put the equation for g(x)=sqrt(x-2) into f(x)=x^2 + 4, so you end up getting that the domain is all reals, instead of the domain being where sqrt(x-2) is defined."

"People did pretty well on the quiz this week"



Assignment 8 (due Friday 10-17-08)
"People did very well on this homework. There was still some people who did not label their graphs, but much less than last homework. The only question that people had trouble on this week was problem 5, number 2 of the algebra worksheet. The biggest issue was people cancelling stuff that could not be cancelled."


Assignment 9 (due Friday 10-26-08)
"I didn't see too many major problems. Most people did miss problem 18 (section 5.5) though."



Assignment 10 (due Friday 10-31-08)
"I didn't reallly see any big problems that many students missed; those that turned in there homework did very well this week. I suppose that the only thing that is worth mentioning is that some people did miss the more complicated problems where you had to solve for x, with x in the exponent."



Assignment 12 (due Friday 11-14-08)
" People did very well on this homework, for the most part. A lot of people did seem to have some trouble calculating cotangent; on questions where they were asked to calculate all 6 trig functions, many calculated cotangent wrong, or just skipped it. People also had some trouble with # 80, of 6.4 (the graphing problem). One of the most common problems seemed to be not taking the negative of the amplitute into account."