CPSC 231: Final Exam Information

(The page is now largely complete. If there are changes or additions they will likely be small ones).

Date/location:

• The final exam is scheduled by the Office of the Registrar. You can find the date/time/location on the [university Peoplesoft web portal]
• It will be a duration of 120 minutes

Review material:

• During lecture as I covered the material I will provided suggestions of what an exam-like question may look like. You can look to your class notes for this info and note the details as it comes up.

• Extra-extra review questions: They are meant to provide you with some extra practice so you need to actually try them on your own to get anything out of it. For that reason, solutions won't be posted and I won't just "email you the solutions". But it really shouldn't be a big loss because I have taught you how you can find out the answers for yourself:

  • For the 'tracing' questions where you have to determine the output of a program then you can always type in the program or expression and run it yourself. (Copy and paste works well out of PDF files).
  • The 'writing' questions (e.g. write a query or write a program) are a little trickier but you can still check your answers by testing the results e.g. does your program produce the results specified in the question.
  • If you are still unsure of things after you have attempted a question (e.g. you can't figure out why you got a given result after typing it in and running the program), then you can ask (just be sure to show me the work that you have done so I can see how far that you have gotten and perhaps where you are having problems). Again, don't just coming in cold without making an attempt.
• [Online review questions]
• An extra resource link to help with tracing programs: [External link] (Note: not all the topics may have been covered or covered to the same extent as described in this resource for a particular semester).
• Still want more practice questions? Try working through the sample problems in the bookstore textbook!
• Finished all the textbook problems and want still more? Try working through practice problems in the (Python v3.X) textbooks that you can find via the UC-Safari website. (Note that I haven't personally vetted the textbooks for quality or match for CPSC 231 so you will need to do that beforehand).

Instructions for the day of the exam (instructions that you should follow when you enter the room before you start writing)

Front cover with actual exam instructions (so make sure you look at this beforehand)

• One important change from the midterm! Use pencil for the multiple choice because they will be computer scanned this time and use pen for the short answer (as before).
• 

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.
• Text books: can 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.
• Lab exercises and the lab handouts: I won't be directly examining you on this material (unless it overlaps with the lecture material, the exceptions are the material on UNIX would you got to apply in A1 and the material on graphics that you applied for mini-assignment 5)

Exam topics

The exam will be cumulative. You are expected to be familiar with material covered before the midterm. But the bulk of the questions will focus heavily on material you saw after the midterm. The exception is functions. Because it's difficult to write useful or even just semi-useful program by applying just one programming concept some exam questions will relate to material from several topics (e.g., you could be required to apply branches, functions, files and lists in just a single question or even in the body of a single function). Consequently it won't be possible to give a topic by topic break-down of the proportion of the exam that relate to a particular topic. However what can be specified is the major topics (worth a greater proportion of the final exam) and the minor topics (still important but will tend to be worth a lesser proportion).

Exam questions¹

^{1 It's based on a near-final version of the final exam (exact proportions may vary *slightly*)}