Final Exam

What to bring¶

• Yourself.
• Your UW ID card (we will check these!).
• A pen or pencil and eraser.
• Water
• A 1-page cheatsheet
  • Note: we will provide a reference sheet that includes some documentation that you won’t have to memorize or include on your own cheatsheet.
  • Note 2: This reference sheet may change between now and the exam date.

Where to sit¶

Seating chart is by section.

Format¶

This is a hand-written test, meaning NO ELECTRONIC DEVICES of any kind allowed, including calculators. Any math on the exam will be limited to simple arithmetic; we’re assessing for Python and programming, not for math!

Question types may include some of the following. Note: this is not an exhaustive list, nor will all of these formats appear. This list is meant to give you an idea of what might possibly appear on the exam.

• Given a program, function, or code snippet and possible inputs, what is the output?
• What is the value of variables X, Y, Z on line N?
• Fill in the code: Replace the blanks on line N with an appropriate statement or expression
• Evaluate expressions
• Write a function that takes … and returns …
• Please describe (some concept from the course) and why it’s important

Topics¶

Every topic covered in the quarter is fair game for appearing on the exam.

The short list of topics are:

• Variables, Statements, Expressions
• For loops, range, nested loops
• If statements and conditionals (booleans)
• Functions, function arguments, and return statements
• Lists and nested lists
• File input/output (I/O)
• Dictionaries and nested dictionaries
• Sets
• Graphs
• Sorting
• Testing, debugging, and program errors
• Basic Classes

Practice¶

Notes and Caveats¶

For all past Final exams, the following caveats apply:

• Our 24sp exam assumes Python 3.10+.
  • As such ALL print statements should have (). E.g., print() or print("Hello")
  • Division (/) always does float division. E.g., 1 / 2 evaluates to 0.5. (In past Python versions, it would have been 0. That is no longer the case.)
• We will not ask you to “draw the environment”.
• Many past exams refer to “stack frames.” These are similar to the “Frames” in PythonTutor.

Practice Exams¶

Here is a document along with its key containing questions from past finals along with topics you may be tested on.

If you prefer, you can also look at past finals by year:

• 24wi Final (and its answer key)
• 23au Final (and its answer key)
• 23sp Final (and its answer key)
• 23wi Final (and its answer key)
• 18sp Final (and its answer key)
  • Note old non-parentheses print statements
• 17wi Final (and its answer key)
  • Relevant problems: 1, 2, 4, 5 (incorrect print 5c), 6 (6a incorrect print), 7a
  • 3 - incorrect print, division is truncated. Correct answer = sum: 14.4
• 16wi Final (and its answer key)
  • Relevant problems: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (5b uses old print), 6, 7a
• 15sp Final (and its answer key)
  • Relevant problems are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (6a solution assumes truncated division, but Python 3.7+ automatically does floating point division)