A guide on Midterm and Final Statistics Exam

Exams go a long way in the evaluation of students' understanding of course material. Exams show a course instructor how much grasp the students have on certain topics and where they might require a bit of extra help. Exams are set in diverse ways. The most common mode of answering exam questions comes in the form of essays, multiple choice questions, filling in the blanks, and passage and character identification depending on an instructor’s preference and specifications.

Exams and tests are administered at different times and occasions. There are of course those instructors who prefer to give random assessment tests (RATs) while others go with continuous assessment tests (CATs). At preferred times during the semester or term, most instructors will administer midterm examinations. Those instructors who chose to give midterms will also most likely set final exams at the end of the school term. There are other course instructors who do not administer midterms but have a comprehensive final exam at the close of a semester/ term.

Where midterms are administered, the exam content most likely tests the course content up to where the instructor reached. This is usually a good way to ensure that students have mastered current concepts and ideas. The final exam thus tests concepts and ideas from the start of the second half of the term with general concepts on the course. Where both midterms and finals are administered, they usually have a similar style of testing and are therefore predictable.

An overview of the midterm exam on statistics

Midterm examinations are often times administered at the midpoint of a term/ semester. This style of testing that has both midterms and finals is usually engineered in such a way that is not cumulative. That is to say that the concepts that an instructor is testing are usually course material running up to the midpoint in the term. In most cases, the instructor just wants to see that students have grasped the basic concepts of the course material which will be relevant in understanding coursework. The application of those basic concepts might then be tested progressively in the final exam.

An overview of the final exam on statistics

 The basic idea here is that final exam are similar in format and structure to the midterm exams. Finals most likely test material from the start of the second half of the term running through to the end. These exams also have the capability of testing concepts taught in the first half of the term to the extent that those concepts are basic and form the foundation of coursework.

Final exams in most schools are contingent upon the attendance of a student. This is to say that if a student does not attend at least 2 -thirds of the semester then they are unfit to sit the assessment. Student attendance is important because most of the important concepts and ideas are taught in class and a student cannot purport to have a grasp of the course when they do not attend class.