PHSC 1003 Study Skills Are You Ready?

PHSC 1003 Common High School Experience Homework Taken up, sometimes graded Significant portion of grade based on homework Tests Multiple choice, fill-in-blanks, matching, true/false Study guide almost an exact replicate of test Grades Bonus points given for showing up/simple assignments Added points (incorrectly called curve) given to skew average

PHSC 1003 Traditional College Experience Homework Assigned, but rarely taken up or graded Little to no part of the grade relies directly on it, but if you do not do it, you will have trouble on tests Tests Multiple choice and true/false in large classes, essay in small Study guide tells you content that is covered, but does not have any test questions or such Grades Bonus points rare, usually requires major project If grades are curved, it is a true curve and the average is a C

PHSC 1003 Curve Scores forced to fit a Gaussian curve Grade assigned based on number of standard deviations away from the mean

PHSC 1003 Current College Experience Mixture between these two scenarios Sciences tend to lean more toward the traditional college experience Which would you prefer?

PHSC 1003 Skills Set Needed to Succeed A great deal of advice out there on how to study for college Most comprehensive list of study skills have a common set of messages A few seek to take the easy route, while most do not

PHSC 1003 Websites

PHSC 1003 Science Skills Science requires many skills that are not mentioned on these lists Science is very quantitative, which means that math skills are very important Science includes experimentation, which requires a completely different skill base from other disciplines

PHSC 1003 Fermi Problems Named after Enrico Fermi, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th Century Seemingly unsolvable problems due to a lack of information Require one to estimate information and rely on errors canceling to give good approximation

PHSC 1003 Examples How many piano tuners are in the Chicago area? How much time is spent aimlessly browsing on the Internet in a year by people in the U.S.? How much money is required to actually educate an undergraduate? How many pounds of chicken wings are consumed each day in the world?

PHSC 1003 Use in Science Great way to check answers to see if correct Without an operating theory, allows one to investigate which parameters are important to situation