Are there guides for assigning problem difficulty levels in ME textbooks?

[Frabjous]

I was recently looking at some freshman ME textbooks that had over 100 problems per chapter. Are there resources that identify the difficulty level for each individual problem (for example: easy, medium, hard, fiendish) for the common textbooks? I am not looking for solution manuals.

Another way of viewing it, are there guides on which problems to assign?

 

[jedishrfu]

Likely not, the usual scheme is to assume the first third are easy, the next medium and the last third hard with the last few very hard.

You'll see this when profs pick problems to solve where they'll say do 5,7,9 and then do 23,25,27 and 43 or something like that so you know they picked them by varying difficulty levels.

 

[mpresic3]

Maybe the preface of the textbook will tell you the strategy the author has in mind for presenting so many problems. I note at the the undergrad level for example EE. chapters contain many "drill" like problems and the reader is expected to solve a great number of them (especially with circuits and ohm's law (mesh and node voltage techniques)). However, without knowing the book, I would hate to say, solve > 70 of them, when they all may be brain breakers On the other hand, I would hate to say solve 10 of them, when more may be needed to develop enough practice.

Most graduate level books present problems that are less drill like or pedestrian and involve more and more ingenious techniques, and consequently there are fewer of them. Ten Jackson Classical Electrodynamics may be as time cosuming, as 50 Ohm's law node voltage problems. Also the aims of the authors; Jackson to develop technique; the other to develop practice; may be different