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CPSC 203: Midterm Information

Date/location:

 

Review material:

 

Front cover from the actual exam (so make sure you look at this beforehand...important so make sure you read them beforehand!):

(Flip side of cover - top of page showing where you write your student ID number)

Material that you should study

Using software applications: General
 
  • You won't be asked about where different features are located in a particular program i.e., what is the sequence of clicks to invoke a particular feature of Excel

MS-Excel
 
  • Generally you don't have to specify formulas from scratch (save for 'if' or the 'VLOOKUP')
 
  • You will need to know how the formulas covered in class work so you can recognize and evaluate them in exam. That is if you are given a formula you may be asked to determine the results e.g., you see a spreadsheet with some data and a formula that performs some operations on that data and you are asked to specify the value or values returned.
 
  •  Remember: You won't be allowed to use a calculator let alone a more powerful device such as tablet or laptop. However any calculations that may be asked to perform should be fairly simply so you can evaluate them by hand. (It is assumed that you can handle the common mathematical operations that you were taught in grades 1 - 12).

MS-Access
 
  • Input masks and validation rules: you could be asked to specify either of these on an exam in order to fulfill some requirements e.g., "What is the validation rule that you should specify if you wanted to ensure that the bank balance is non-negative".
 
  • Forming queries: you could be asked to form your queries either graphically ("design view" in Access) or in text form (SQL).
 
  •  Evaluating the result of a query: given a set of data in some tables and a query (graphical or SQL) you could be asked to determine the set of results returned.

Exam topics

Lecture topics covered so far

Approximate proportion of exam2
Computer fundamentals 16%
Logic   6
Spreadsheets 42
Databases 34
Miscellaneous1   2%

1 The topic or topics being evaluated in the question doesn't fall neatly into one of the above categories e.g., the question covers materials that span multiple topics

Exam questions2

Multiple choice questions 30 marks
  30 questions

Short answer questions  20 marks
  SA1: Spreadsheet question (9 marks)
  SA2: Database question (5 marks)
  SA3: Database question (6 marks)

2 It's based on a near-final version of the midterm (exact proportions may vary *slightly*)

Min raw score Grade point
0 0
40 1
46 1.1
48 1.2
50 1.3
52 1.4
53 1.5
54 1.6
55 1.7
56 1.8
58 1.9
60 2
61 2.1
63 2.2
65 2.3
67 2.4
68 2.5
69 2.6
70 2.7
71 2.8
73 2.9
75 3
76 3.1
78 3.2
80 3.3
81 3.4
83 3.5
84 3.6
85 3.7
86 3.8
88 3.9
90 4
93 4.1
96 4.2
98 4.3