Day 125

I'm so very glad that today is over.


I got up a little early to do some work on life contingencies before I went to class.  I have no idea what happened in math finance... I started to pay attention but then I realized that I would be using precious brain power that needed to be used for thinking about life contingencies.  So I wrote notes... and I really hope that I can follow it when I look at them tomorrow.


So then... it was test time.  Wow.  That was a killer.  Beforehand Dean told us that there would be no curveballs and it would just be straight forward calculations, like the quiz and homework.  This turned out to be entirely false.  None of the questions were straight forward.  We had 50 minutes to do 10 questions... and usually one question takes 15 to 20 minutes.  Now, I'm not very good at math... but something didn't seem right about that.  On top of that, none of the homeworks, quiz questions, examples in the book, or practice exercises in the book were this difficult.  Most of the questions combined ideas from all three chapters.  This wouldn't be so bad except that none of the practice questions did that.  So at no point did we have practice doing the things on the exam.  For instance, the last 4 questions involved finding specific values of insurance policies given a life table.  This combined ideas from chapters 3 and 4.  However, none of the things we did gave us practice doing this.  In other news, none of us finished the exam.  Dustin almost did.  So we're going to talk with Dean on Monday.  I know that he gave us a hard test to prepare for the actuarial exams... but in our defense we will be taking practice tests and doing related studying when we are getting ready to take a test.  The things we will be doing will reflect what is on the exams.  But none of us had any idea how the exam was going to be (and he assured us that we shouldn't worry about it and it would be very similar to the quiz).  He also skipped a section that he said wasn't important and we wouldn't need to know.  I'll let you guess what showed up on the test.  Hint: it was the section he skipped and said we wouldn't need to know.


Yeah.  That was a downer.  So I came back, had a nice big salad for lunch, and played Team Fortress for a little bit.  Then... I started grading.  Yay.  I did that for a good deal of the afternoon.  Just grading the extended response portions of my exams.  Jessie was gracious enough to offer to help, so I will be taking her up on it.  It was kind of sad seeing some of the questions my students missed.  One in particular, the envy-free division problem... I really thought more of them would get.  A few of them got it.  But a lot of them just tried to use logic and not actually do any arithmetic.  Though they did have a division, it wasn't using the envy-free division method we had discussed in class.  So for most of them I couldn't give any credit.  I really don't like doing that.  I feel so bad for them.  There were a few students that surprised me and got it correct.


Anyhow, Timbo came over around 5 and we just did some more work.  He did laundry.  I made stir fry for dinner.  I was really in the mood for stir fry.  Tim invited us all to go out to Savage's this evening, so we went down there around 7:30.  Since I had already eaten dinner I just got a snack.  I had "Irish nachos," I believe.  It was french fries, cheese, bacon, and ranch dressing.  It was so tasty.  It was too loud though, so it was hard to talk with everyone.  But it was pretty fun.  Then I came home.  And supposedly Kimmy is going to be here soon?  So yeah.  I should probably clean my apartment a little before she gets here.


Yup.  So that's it.  Night!