Yes, I noticed the same problem. I actually reached out to the author and sent him a pretty detailed list of the typos on some of the practice exams and what I thought was the correct answers. He was very receptive and kind to my comments. He may have an errata available for the book now, it's worth asking.
The typos and incorrect answers on the practice exam really freaked me out. I was using this exam as a cap to my studies, and I thought I just bombed the test and wasn't prepared because I had so many different. Turned out alot of it was just typos that changed the answers.
Once I got over the typos, I thought the book was decent value. I thought the practice exams matched the content and difficulty of the SE Exam pretty closely. He also covered items in the book that wasn't covered in my other texts. I thought as a supplement to my other material, it was a good buy.
I went back in my emails and found my comments regarding typos on the vertical practice exam. Might be useful to you if you are studying for the vertical portion. I think it's still the same edition I bought back in 2017.
"I had issues with problems 104, 119, 120, 128, and 132 of the vertical forces sample exam. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep my work when I worked the practice exam for reference, but these are the problems I remember giving me issues. I provided a brief description of what I think is incorrect, but I could very well be working the problems wrong.
- 104: I believe the moment of inertia is calculated incorrectly for the composite shape. In the moment of inertia calculation, I believe the channel contribution term 8.37(11.72-3.95-1.12)2 should be 8.37(11.72-3.95+1.12)2. It’s a small difference, but it makes the answer off by enough where I thought I was going something incorrect
- 119: I believe you would also need to check the deflection limit of l/120 for D+L (depends on moisture content of wood). I took the 400 plf dead load in the problem statement to be dead load in the tributary area of the beam, not the dead load of the beam itself which the problem says to ignore.
- 120: I think the solution does not use consistent units. For the shear stress caused by the torsional moment, the solution uses kip*feet for the torsional moment, but inches for all the other terms. The shear stress should be calculated using the torsional moment in k*in to keep units consistent.
- 128: I believe the balanced moment is calculated incorrectly. The tension steel moment component should be added to the rest of the moment components, not subtracted like it is in the solution. I calculated a balanced moment of 5110 kip*in.
- 132: The problem asks the compression force in member DE, when the solution looks like it calculates it for member GE. We can tell from inspection that member DE must be in tension."
