How to Find Them?
How to Approach them?
Why Only Confirmation?
Don't Know how to Answer problem?
Back to: Genetics Home, Course
at a glance?
How to find them?
Go to the calendar and find a day where problems from
a problem set will be considered. Click on the assignment. That's it! If
the problem set does not appear on the screen, it means that you do not
have Adobe Acrobat Reader. Solution #1: Go to any public computer in Jepson
or Gottewald computer centers try again. Solution #2: Get Acrobat Reader
by going to the first assignment and clicking on Get Acrobat Reader.
You can find a list of all the problem sets by clicking on the Problem Set icon in the main menu. Be warned that problem sets that have not yet been assigned may be from last year and subject to revision!
How to Approach Problem Sets:
You will be assigned several problem sets throughout
the semester, generally one per week. You will find a range of questions,
from straight-forward to Huh? As best we can, we will include problems
that put the concepts we are talking about within a context where they
actually arise in real life. In those cases, you will find that the biggest
difficulty is often understanding what the problem is all about. Once you
grasp that, the solution sometimes takes care of itself. Questions that
do not readily connect with what we are talking about can certainly be
more frustrating than drill-type questions, but finding connections can
be more exhilarating than reciting definitions of abstract terms and gives
you practice at the kind of skill that you will more likely use in whatever
you do in the future.
Although the exhiliration experienced when you find that your hard won answer matches that in an answer key is undeniable, there will nonetheless be no answers distributed for any of the problem sets. However, if you want confirmation that your answers are correct (or redirection if you are way off), you may submit them to one of us. Try e-mail! In the past, we have managed to return answers within 24 hours. If this service becomes swamped, we may have to rethink the matter.
Why no answers except by confirmation? Because the answers are not important! It is the trip there that counts. We realize that knowing the answer can make the trip a lot easier to find, but we feel that this method misses many of the blind alleys and pitfalls that are part of a deep education.
What do I do when I have no idea how to answer a problem? First of all, do not panic! This is normal. This is life. Learn to welcome confusion as an old friend. The true enemy is not confusion but despair. When you remain unsure of your moorings, that is when anything is possible. Revel in that brief freedom! Relax and let the problem tell its story. Second, reflect on what you need to know in order to answer the problem. Seek a connection like, "the problem would be easy if I only knew how many bilirumps there are in a frazzle." Then your task reduces to the usually simple matter of finding the requisite fact. Perhaps you feel that there is not enough information available to answer the question. That is a start! In that case, try writing out an unassailable proof that the question cannot be answered. Often in doing so, you find a hole in your argument, a hole through which you can escape and answer the question. And, like a worm on a hook, keep wiggling. When you try new things, you might work yourself loose.
Once you have gone through these steps but have not reached a satisfying answer, you are ready to bring your troubles to someone else. We have tried to provide a variety of ways to help you overcome occasional (or even chronic) impasses: problem sessions, office hours (both for us and the lecture TAs), and e-mail. In our experience, however, students have pointed most often to group sessions as the most effective way of finding insights. Whatever works best for you, you will gain more by focusing your problem before you come. Rather than a general whine, "I cannot understand Problem 17", try to get to the point where you can say, "Problem 17 requires that I know the ratio of flibbers to jees and the book does not say what they are." We can go from there.