Q: When and where is the midterm?
A: October 12. You may write the exam during any 90-minute period between 12:01am and 11:59pm Mountain time.
Q: How long will the exam be?
A: The exam is 90 minutes.
The eClass system will start counting time once you begin the exam.
Q: Is the exam open-book?
A: No, the exam is closed-book. You may bring a "cheat sheet"; see next question.
Q: What are the allowed tools and materials?
A: You can consult one sheet of paper with notes, either handwritten
or printed, double-sided. You may use a simple calculator. You may not use any
other electronic devices such as your cell phone, programmable calculators etc. They must
remain closed during the exam.
Q: What will be included in the topics for the exam?
A: Everything we discussed in class,
up to and including Lecture 10.
This includes activities and sample code up to Lecture 10, and up to week 5.
Required readings up to and including the
"Checkers is solved" paper.
Anything related to assignment 1, and anything related to the
specification (but not solution) of assignment 2.
Regarding Python, see below.
Q: What will not be on the exam?
A: Anything that is marked as "optional" on the slides, on the
website, or under activities.
Questions about irrelevant details of the readings. For example,
I might ask a general question about the size or shape of the state space of checkers,
but I will not ask how many states with 16 checkers there are.
Q: What Python knowledge will be needed for the exam?
A: We expect you to be able to
read, understand, slightly modify, and answer questions about
existing Python code, within the limits of
what we have done in this course and the assignments.
Q: What is the format of the exam?
A: In general, the exam will be delivered in a format that is similar to quizzes.
Questions will be delivered within eClass.
There will be a mix of true/false, multiple choice, and short answer questions.
There will not be any long answer (essay) questions in this exam.
Questions will be randomly selected from several pools.
Each student will receive
the same number of questions from each pool.
For example, there may be 3 questions
randomly selected from the pool "topic 1 - easy",
followed by 3 random questions
from pool "topic 1 - medium", etc.
All questions from one pool will be grouped together.
All randomization will be done by the eClass system automatically.
Q: What if I miss the exam because of an emergency?
A: Contact your instructor within two days to possibly
be granted
an excused absence. See under "What If I Miss a Term Exam?" on https://uofa.ualberta.ca/computing-science/links-and-resources/policy-information/department-course-policies
Q: Will there be a lecture on October 12?
A: No.
Created: Feb 3, 2020 Last modified: Feb 25, 2021
Martin Müller, Ting-Han Wei, James Wright