To study for the tests you should:

Read the text carefully, stopping periodically to reflect on your understanding. Go back over portions as necessary. Be able to summarize each section. Be able to discuss the concepts presented in each section. Expect test problems that assess your comprehension of the assigned reading.

Study the class activities that we did in class. Ask yourself questions like: what is this activity about? what did we learn from this activity? Often, the parts of an activity fit together to help you explain a mathematical fact or phenomenon. Study the activity until you can give a good mathematical explanation of the fact or phenomenon. There may be a test problem that asks you to give this explanation.

Do all the assigned don't hand in homework and study the answers given in the text. Expect to see some test problems that are very similar to these problems, whether or not they were discussed in class.

Study the homework that was assigned to hand in. Keep in mind that you may have received a check on an assignment even though your work was not in a fully polished form. Refer to notes you may have taken on class discussions about the assignment if you were not asked to rework and resubmit the assignment for a score. Although many homework problems are longer than a test problem could be, some test problems may be related to the homework problems.

Reflect on the reading, the class activities, the exercises, and the problems as a whole. They are meant to work together to help you understand the concepts deeply. If you were the instructor, what questions would you ask to assess a deep understanding of the concepts?

Look for connections between topics, including topics we studied earlier in the semester. You may be asked to write a short paragraph relating topics or concepts that we have studied.