(14-04-2020, 08:05 AM)ppppenguin Wrote: Not sure if we were the first year at uni to be allowed calcs in exams. In my case Imperial College 1975-78. My Texas SR50 did sterling service. 3 hour battery life between charges was just enough.
The most interesting exam was on circuit design, set by a young lecturer called Robert Spence. He later became a professor. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/r.spence The exam was open book. You could take anything you liked into the exam. Those who took their lecture notes would pass unless utterly stupid. Those who had done the background reading or otherwise had a good grounding in the subject would do much better. You could actually score over 100% as you could do any number of questions and be credited for them. I think I scraped just over 100% and was top of class list. A boyhood spent mucking about with electronics was not wasted
I still have the Aristo slide rule I used in the 6th form and part of first year uni. Never had the joy(?) of using 7 figure tables. Just the usual 4 figure ones.
I did all the maths options during my electronics degree at Southampton. Things like partial differential equations and solid state theory, all of which I've totally forgotten. Those were done along with maths students. One of them, an exceptionally talented lady mathematician averaged well over 100% over all three years. The question booklet would say "answer 4 of 8 questions", so she'd do all 8 and walk out an hour early. The maths prof, a wonderful guy called Peter Landsberg (RIP) enrolled her for a PhD grant, assuming that she would want to do one - but without asking her first. Being somewhat feisty, she reacted poorly to not being consulted and left to do Teacher Training!
I missed overall best mark, and the Zeppler Prize by a frustrating 1%. I was at the time really p****d off by that.
Craig
