Final
Logistics
The final will happen in-person from 8:30-10:20am on Wednesday March 15. You will take the exam in Thomson Hall 101.
But what happens if...
- I have a conflict with the exam time that I know about right now? Email Robbie right away so we can schedule a conflict. The set of pre-existing conflicts we accept is limited since the final schedule is posted at the start of the quarter.
- I need to isolate on the day of the exam? Let us know as soon as you can (by private Ed post or email to Robbie and Allie); we'll schedule you for a conflict exam or find some other way for you to take the exam safely. We will not ask you for proof that you need to isolate.
UW has a flowchart to help you determine if isolation is required. If the flowchart does not require isolation, but you still believe it would be wise to isolate, we will still offer a conflict exam. (We will not ask for details on why you are isolating).
- I'm sick? We'll schedule you for the conflict if you'll be well enough by then (in-person if you'll be able to be in a room with others). Otherwise we'll find some other way for you to take the exam safely when you're ready to work. If you aren't well enough to take an exam by the time grades need to be submitted, we can give an incomplete and finish the quarter when you're ready to work (this is the same thing we'd do pre-pandemic for significant illnesses).
- [other emergency] happens Let Robbie and Allie know as soon as you know something unusual is going to interfere with your ability to take the exam. These must be significant and beyond your control, but we will accommodate them (an example of this might be you got into a car accident on your way to campus).
- For all of the above, you're emailing both Robbie and Allie because Allie will handle logistics later in the week while Robbie travels. Find our emails on the staff page.
The Exam Itself
In-Exam Resources
- The exam is closed-book and individual.
- We will allow each student one 8.5x11inch-sheet (both-sides) of hand-written notes during the exam.
- Hand-written means either really handwritten (like with pencil or pen) OR a facsimile of handwritten, e.g., you hand-wrote on an iPad and printed it out. If you use technology you may NOT use it to artificially shrink your handwriting.
- We may remind you of some key definitions, but only when they aren't the main point of the problem
- For example, we won't remind you what irregular means when asking you to prove a set is irregular, or what the definition of a subset is when we ask you to prove that one set is a subset of another (those are the point of those problems!), but we might remind you of the definition of mod so you remember whether it's n|b-a or n|a-b.
- We recommend you consider writing proof templates on your note sheet! We will not provide those templates on the exam.
What could be covered?
- Everything from the slide deck for lecture 1 through the slide deck for lecture 24 (Firday of week 9) can show up in any way on the exam. (Note this is the deck rather than the lecture itself; that content may extend to the next lecture meeting).
- There will be one problem that gives you the option of proving a language irregular (lecture 25) or proving a set is uncountable (lecture 26). It will be your choice which to do.
- We will not directly test you on the other content of lectures 26. "directly" means, for example, we might use the definition of one-to-one as the inspiration for a problem, but we would remind you of any definitions you need and would write the problem expecting it to be a "new concept" for you.
- We will not directly test you on the content only in the deck for lecture 27.
Where will the emphasis be?
- We will focus on writing problems for aspects of the course that are critical for future classes, and on topics that were covered after the midterm.
- You can expect some training wheels questions (e.g., translation, quantifiers, taking contrapositives, etc.)
- There will be two induction proofs
- Proofs will all be English proofs; we won't ask you to write an inference proof or a proof that just applies equivalences from the big chart.
What won't be covered?
- Items we identified as non-testable during the quarter, e.g. taking a reflexive-transitive closure and the DFA-minimization algorithm won't be covered.
Study materials
The materials below are intended to help you study. They are not a guarantee of what types of questions will be on the exam. Note that prior quarters had slightly different sets of topic coverage, so you may find questions on "non-testable" topics in these materials. The materials may also have extraneous old announcements or advice that you can ignore (e.g. the old final incorrectly claims your final will be open-book; yours is still closed-book).
- Section of the last week of classes will be final review.
- We will have a TA-led review session.
- Robbie's 22wi final and solutions
- This is an old 311 final, and solutions
- Some practice problems and their solutions
- Robbie's 20Au final and solutions; this was a take-home exam, expect yours to look different!
- You can also go back to prior 311 quarters' webpages to look at their final homework assignments (especially during remote quarters) or their final exam study materials. Much will overlap, but some will be different! To get to old webpages, delete the /23wi and everything after from the URL for this page to see the list of old pages.
How should we study?
- Take the given final under exam conditions (e.g., timed, not googling or asking others for help) so you get more practice trying to write proofs in a time-constrained way.
- Look back at old homework problems and solutions.
- Look back at old section problems.
- Think carefully about what you want on your note-sheet. With a limited time, you'll want to be able to find what you're looking for quickly, not simply list every fact.
Study materials
Midterm
You will have a take-home midterm the weekend of Feb 10-12.
Midterm Logistics
- We will release the exam on gradescope at 5:00 PM on Friday February 10th.
- Once the exam is open, we will put Ed on private-question-only mode. We will answer questions as you might expect during a normal exam: we won't give hints on how to approach problems or define technical terms, but we will clarify ambiguous wording.
- There will be a pinned Ed post, where we will put any clarifications we think would benefit the whole class.
- Since the exam is time-constrained, we may not get to your question before time runs out. If you think a quesiton is ambiguous, write down how you're interpreting it on your submission so we have a better chance of understanding.
Homework 5 Feedback
- If you do not use late days on HW5 part 2, we intend to return feedback to you Saturday night.
- If you do use late days on HW5 part 2, we intend to return feedback to you by Sunday at noon, though that may be delayed (especially if you use 3 late days).
- We will post sample solutions to HW5 part 2 on Ed after the late deadline.
- We will not return HW5 part 1 feedback before the exam ends.
Timing Logistics
- The exam is designed so that it would take approximately 30 minutes if done in-class, but you will have 2 hours to do it.
- The exam is due at 11:59 PM on Sunday February 12. You may choose when to do the exam over the weekend.
- We will be grading the exam as though it were in-class/time-constrained For example, we don't expect it to be typeset (though that is acceptable if you want to typeset) nor do we expect submissions to be as polished as a homework submission would be.)
- Gradescope disallows submissions once your time limit has expired. If you run into unexpected issues while taking the exam (e.g., a computer crash) resume working when you can and send your submission in an email to Robbie when you're done.
- You cannot use late days to delay taking the midterm; if you have an emergency or illness that would interfere with taking the exam in the alloted time, email Robbie as soon as possible.
Resources/Collaboration
- The exam is open-note. You may use any notes you've made and any of our course materials, etc.
- The exam is also "open-existing-internet-recourses" provided that you are not searching for the exact problems we have asked. If you discover an essentially-identical problem, you must tell us in your submission what similar resource you found.
- You may not ask about our questions on help-sites (like stackexchange or chegg).
- You may not ask any AI or ML models (like chat-GPT) to solve our problems.
- This is an individual assignment. Unlike the homeworks, you may not discuss the exam with classmates or people outside the class.
Topic Coverage
- One of the exam questions will be a proof by induction.
- One of the exam questions will be some other proof.
- We will not require you to run the extended Euclidian algorithm nor find multiplicative inverses, or work with gcds on the midterm.
Practice
We strongly recommend you look at the "NOT the actual midterm" assignment on gradescope to see what a gradescope timed exam looks like. Note that you 2 hours starts as soon as you open the exam on gradescope.
We recommend the following resources to study.
- A prior quarter's midterm exam and solutions
- Section on Feb 9 will be a mix of induction practice and midterm review
- Lecture on Friday Feb 10 will be induction practice