BIOL 372: General Ecology

The teaching staff has posted a new exam_stuff resource.

Title: Exam3_Key.pdf


You can view it on the course page: https://piazza.com/wsu/fall2014/biol372/resources

The teaching staff has posted a new exam_stuff resource.

Title: EcologyStudyGuide_Exam4.pdf


You can view it on the course page: https://piazza.com/wsu/fall2014/biol372/resources

I need to stay home with my sick kid today, so I am canceling office hours today. 

I will post a key to exam 3 and a study guide for exam 4 as soon as I can.

Jesse

Hi everyone, 

Exam 3 generally went well for people. The average was a 79% and the median was 82%. There were a few extra points on the exam, so no points will be added to the grade written on your test. 

As always, let me know if you see mistakes in grading or have questions. 

Best,

Jesse

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay, but the practice exam (last year's exam) is not posted. Keep in mind that it includes some things we did not cover this year. 

Good luck,

Jesse

The teaching staff has posted a new exam_stuff resource.

Title: Exam3_Practice.pdf
http://www.piazza.com/class_profile/get_resource/hyhk3h3nkp92v3/i2kpcz49mey34r


You can view it on the course page: https://piazza.com/wsu/fall2014/biol372/resources

Dear Ecologists, 

I have sorted through how to deal with our very brief foray into community ecology. First, I already assigned a subset of the sections (really just 2-4), which focus on succession, food chain length, and trophic cascades. Those will be the things we emphasize in lecture and on the exam. You should have _some_ idea of what an ecosystem engineer is, but don't worry about defining them, etc. Just recognize one when you hear about one.

Second, I have posted the study guide, which can point you in the right direction for what to focus on in studying this chapter. We left some interesting connections off the table, but sometimes less is more (understandable, memorable, influential...). Note that I left the bits on nutrient cycling on the study guide. We probably won't get to all of this before the exam, but I thought you should start making connections earlier rather than later. We will really just cover disease through decomposition for this third exam.

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Jesse

We now have the exams graded. On average you all did much better on the second exam, so well done! I added 2 pts to everyone's grade for a couple of questions that were slightly trickier than I wanted. (This was not included in the total shown your test, which will be available in lecture tomorrow.)

The average (including the 2pts) was a 76%. The distribution is shown here:

Again, most people improved in this second exam. In this next figure, these are points that are above the black 1:1 line. The blue line is a sort of best-fit line (locally weighted least squares) showing that on average scores were better than or equal to the previous score.