Criterion A: Notation and Terminology

0    The student does not use appropriate notation and terminology.
1    The student uses some appropriate notation and/or terminology.
2    The student uses appropriate notation and terminology in a consistent manner and does so throughout the work.

It's pretty much impossible to get A0 without also getting F0 and most of the rest of the work at 1 or 0. Thankfully, I don't have any examples to show you.

This example shows quite well how words are sometimes just not as clear as symbols. It is followed by an excerpt of my comments to him, showing just how briefly it could have been stated.

This is an example of how the use of an incorrect term can change the meaning of a statement. The student uses "rate of decrease" where what she means is "amount of decrease." The difference is significant, because as she says later on the same page, the rate of decrease was stated in the task to be approximately proportional to the amount of the drug remaining.

This work shows, at the very beginning, a multitude of careless notational and vocabulary errors. It's as if the student wrote this up to be an example for me! Note the incorrectly written μ (mu) symbol, which reappears often, the missing ≈ sign, and, in the same statement, where she has said that k is equal to kt, which is not what she meant. Just below this explanation, she has used x in place of t in the table heading. While C is a constant in general, it is the quantity of the medication at t = 0. And it's spelled "proportional," not "porportional." (Don't panic, a word or two misspelled by itself is not a deduction. In conjunction with everything else, it adds to the air of carelessness about the writing.

Later in the same response, this student has considerable difficulty with the correct use of parentheses, and she has gone back and forth between x and t the entire time. The function should have been piecewise. Grrr. It's hard to get A0, and there is in fact some correct notation and terminology, but this work shows an incredible lack of attention to detail.

This first example shows generally good use of fractions that include computations on the first line. Of course, the slanted fraction is not the best choice, but at least it was only used where the numerator and denominator were single numbers, not expressions with multiple terms. Also note the excellent definitions of the variables r, c, and i in the formula the student derived.

This example is included to show that correct mathematical notation can be written in by hand where the student has forgotten (or never knew) how to type it correctly. It's still an example of correct notation. (One has to wonder just how difficult it is to type an exponent on the 5, though.)

This is included as an excellent example of notation for a piecewise-defined function. It is part of a response that earned F2. Using correct notation for functions is important, since it makes your work understandable (or, more importantly, failing to use correct notation makes it difficult or impossible to understand).