M208 is done.

A rather dark side of my personality manifested itself the last two months or so. Don't worry I killed the monster. I sort of digressed to the period when I was in high school, i.e. I did not send my work on TMAs 6 and 7 to my tutor since I more or less had it with that reptilian. Goodbye wished for, hoped for distinction. More about this in another post. In this post I'll report about the exam itself.

The exam took place in The Hague. I counted four people coming in doing M208 but there could have been more. In the examination room with about 16 or so people I have seen at least three different sets of papers of which S320 was one. It was mentioned that two people did not show up. When we entered the room we got our papers and could choose a place to work for ourselves.

At 2.30 PM ( local time ) we were allowed to open the paper. Same format as MS221, i.e. two parts A and B. Part A had 12 questions with a maximum score of 70. And Part B was a 2 out of 5 set. We could choose two questions of 15 points each. From what I recall the questions in part A were about ( not in order ):
1. Graph of (2x+3) / (3-x), incl. asymptotes and axes-intercepts.
2. Solving an inequality.
3. Diagonalizing a matrix using eigenvectors.
4. Question about [{1,2,4,9,10,12}, mult mod 13]
5. Question about Homomorphism z->|z|^2.
6. Question involving R2 geometry using vectors and inner product
7. Question on series
8. Finding an integral
9. Question on a Taylor series
10. Question about permutations
11. Question about the symmetry group of the pentagon.
12. ( Forgotten )

At 4.30 I had completed 9 out of 12 questions. Last year with MS221 I continued working on part A with the result that I only completed half of a question of part B. I think it was a correct decision. I had three questions left which would take me at least 40 minutes, leaving 20 minutes for part B. I could score 18 max. Continuing with part B at this point gave me an opportunity to collect 30 points although part B questions are somewhat more difficult.
I was getting tired and somewhat stresssed. Again, I did not complete all 12 questions in 2 hours. I did not take time to read all five questions. I started to work on question 13 which was on group theory.

13. A question about some finite group with 16 elements. The Cayley Table was given, nothing else.
- Find a cyclic subgroup, call it H.
- Prove that H is normal and that group K ( given ) is not normal.
- List elements of quotient qroup G/H
- Determine the structure of the group.
- ( One more question, forgotten )

It was now 17.00, I chose the next question on Linear Algebra
14. About a linear transformation in R3.
- Find the dimension of the kernel
- What is the geometry of the kernel
- Find a basis of the image
- What is the geoemtry of the image and find an equation
- Given two sets of 3equations with 3 unknowns determine the number of solutions

I feel about the same as last year with MS221. I am fairly sure ( 99% ) of a pass.

All in all, I have learned a lot this year. About mathematics of course, but also about myself and about the effect a study like this can have on a person. Not everything has been said about this study year. More next time.