Information about the first midterm

Grades: [Ascending order of ID number]

Date/location:

• During regular class time: Wednesday February 8

Review material:

• I will conduct an exam review during part of the lecture on Tuesday February 6.

Instructions from the actual exam (so make sure you read them beforehand...important!):

• Duration: 75 Minutes
• This is a closed book exam: No aids of any sort will be allowed (e.g., cell phones must be shut off and out of sight, calculators, laptops, hand held computers, slide rulers, abaci should not be brought into the exam room) will be allowed.
• DO NOT OPEN the exam until you are told to do so.
• For the multiple choice questions make sure that you select the best answer to each question on the computer bubble sheets using an HB pencil or darker. Make sure that you fill in the bubbles on the multiple choice answer sheet for all the labelled categories. (Neglecting to full in all the information may result in your exam getting lost or not marked so it's important not to miss anything!) Here's the info for some of the categories that students typically miss.
   

  Date	February 8 2012
  Instructor	James Tam
  Section	01
  Course name	CPSC
  Course number	409

• For the non-multiple choice questions put your answer in the space provided.

Material that you should study

• The lecture material: the PowerPoint slides will provide you with an outline of the topics to be covered. However studying the information just listed on the slides won't be sufficient to do well on the final exam. You will also need to take notes in class and to study and understand those notes. If you have any questions then make sure that you ask me for help and clarification.
• The text book: they should be used as another source of material to help you understand the material as you prepare for the exam. I won't however directly examine you on material that is listed in the textbooks that I didn't cover in class.

Question types

• Multiple choice
• Matching
• Diagrammatic (possible question types involve: sketching, annotating, describing)
• Short answer (likely just a few sentences or bullet points should suffice for this type of question)

Exam topics

• Early computational devices
• Analog devices
• Early mechanical computers
• Charles Babbage and his machines
• The mechanical monsters (the cut off point will be however far we end up during the lecture on Monday February 6: up to and excluding the discussion of Grace Hopper's life and her contribution to the Harvard Mark I project).

Exam breakdown (based on a near final version of the exam)