Exam Advanced Statistical Mechanics
has been graded today. It has brought quite opposite feelings to me.
The exam appeared to be reasonably popular. As to results, an overwhelming majority have passed while the marks turned to be more average than I could expect, with an exception of a single student who manage to get an exceptional mark.
It was rewarding to see that the "theoretical" part of the course, that outlined during the lectures, went much better than expected. It was rather troubling to see that the problem-solving sessions that were so popular and costed so much effort did not quite get through. An apparent stumbling block were unusual and unpredictable mathematical deficiencies that ranged from mistakes while diffirentiating log function to inability to recognize the relation between summation and integration, and/or to apply a Fourier transform. Less obvious and more difficult problem is to access the ability of a student to expand the knowledge gained just by one step further.
I’ve also contibuted to the confusion: I’ve spell-checked the text of multiple choice questions but managed to print out the previous version of the file. So I got many remarks concerning the spelling: fortunately, this did not seem to lead to any misunderstanding of questions.
For those interested, I’ll upload the exam and solutions later today.
