Exams
Midterm 2 logistics
The second midterm will be released on Canvas (see the Quizzes tab) 8:30am PDT 5/29 and will be due by 8:30am PDT 5/31.
It has the same logistics as midterm 1, but the information is copied here for your convenience.
We will be in the lecture zoom at 8:30am-9:30am PDT in case you want to clarify anything, just for how we would do for an in-person exam.
It is written to be a 1-hour open-note exam, but you may use as much time as you want in that 48 hour time span. It must be taken individually (do not work with others to complete this exam), and there will be multiple versions of the exam to deter cheating. We believe that you will be able to succeed just fine without cheating.
Midterm 2 topics
See slide 3 for the topics list.
Relevant practice material
- Section 9 all problems (most relevant)
- Section 5 problems 7, 8
- Section 6 problems 2, 4
- Section 7 problems 1,3,4
- Section 8 problems 2-6
Midterm 1 logistics
The first midterm will be released on Canvas (see the Quizzes tab) 8:30am PDT 4/24, and will be due by 8:30am PDT 4/26. It is written to be a 1-hour open-note exam, but you may use as much time as you want in that 48 hour time span. It must be taken individually (do not work with others to complete this exam), and there will be multiple versions of the exam to deter cheating. We believe that you will be able to succeed just fine without cheating. Check out the practice midterm posted on Canvas to see the approximate difficulty with a sampling of question types that could be on the midterm. The Canvas quiz also give you an idea of what to expect for formatting your answers. Note: if you leave the page, Canvas seems to not save your answers. You might want to write your answers on paper on the side just so you have backup in case anything goes wrong. Remember that you have 48 hours in such case, so there should be enough time to remain calm.
We will be in the lecture zoom at 8:30am-9:30am PDT in case you want to clarify any anything, just how we would do for an in-person exam. On Saturday we’ll have a Zoom call that you can drop-by for the same purpose of asking clarifications. Link to-be-posted.
If you have bad internet connection and are worried about if something goes wrong, fill out this form and we can try to figure out another alternative method of communication.
Midterm 1 topics
Most of the following topics will show up on midterm 1:
- Code modeling (turning code into a runtime function)
- case analysis for iterative code (what’s the best/worst-case runtime?)
- for recursive code:
- turning recursive code into a recurrence representing the runtime
- Simplifying recurrences
- utilizing the tree method on a recurrence to get to a simplified expression representing the runtime (no summation simplification required like on Exercise 2)
- utilizing the master theorem to simplify a recurrence into its big-Theta bound if possible
- Asymptotic analysis
- assigning plots of functions into the valid big-O/Omega/Theta bounds
- determining valid big-O/Omega/Theta bounds for function expressions (5n is Theta(n))
- Hashing collision resolution strategies
- understanding the mechanisms behind separate chaining, linear probing, and quadratic probing
- BST/AVL invariants
- determining if a given node structure is a valid BST or a valid AVL?
Relevant practice material
- Section 2 problems 1,2,4
- Section 3 problems 1bcd,3ai, 3bi,4,5,6
- Post-lecture review questions that relate to the above topics
- Exercise 1 and Exercise 2
- Lecture slides 4-10 (they have some practice problems in them)
- Section 4 problems, to be posted Monday 4/19 night (still in-progress)