Doing the Math - JHU Mathematics - Johns Hopkins University

APPENDICES
These students should be considered for placement into college algebra or a credit-bearing course immediately
preceding calculus.
Total Right Score of About 86
Students scoring at this level can demonstrate the following additional skills:
understand polynomial functions,
evaluate and simplify expressions involving functional notation, including composition of functions, and solve
simple equations involving:
trigonometric functions,
logarithmic functions, and
exponential functions.
These students can be considered for a precalculus course or a nonrigorous course in beginning calculus.
Total Right Score of About 103
Students scoring at this level can demonstrate the following additional skills:
perform algebraic operations and solve equations with complex numbers,
understand the relationship between exponents and logarithms and the rules that govern the manipulation of
logarithms and exponents,
understand trigonometric functions and their inverses,
solve trigonometric equations,
manipulate trigonometric identities,
solve right-triangle problems, and
recognize graphic properties of functions such as absolute value, quadratic, and logarithmic.
These students should be considered for placement into calculus.
Analysis
Of the six topics designated by the Accuplacer, three of them are well covered, two of them are covered
incompletely, and one of them, trigonometry, is not covered at all. In the proficiency statements, trigonometry
skills appear first at a score of 63. Students who lack knowledge of trigonometry are not precluded from scoring 45
or better on this Accuplacer.
Algebraic Operations
All of the four subtopics appear to be well covered.
Solutions of Equations and Inequalities
All of the three subtopics appear to be well covered.
Coordinate Geometry
Coverage here is somewhat uneven. Of the six subtopics, three of them are well covered, one of them is partially
covered, and one of them is covered only in the “Additional Topics” portion of the VSC.
The following subtopics are implicit in functional analysis, and so appear to be well covered:
The Coordinate Plane,
Straight Lines, and
Graphs of Algebraic Functions.
The coverage of the two remaining subtopics is uneven:
Sets of Points in the Plane: This topic is somewhat assumed in functional analysis. However, there could be
sets of points prescribed that the student is unfamiliar with such as conics, and
Conics: included in the “Additional Topics” portion of the VSC.
64 Doing the Math