All About CS109 Mid-Quarter and Final Exams

Mid-Quarter Exam #1: Wednesday, April 26, 3:00-5:00pm in Hewlett 200
Mid-Quarter Exam #1: Wednesday, April 26, 7:00-9:00pm in Cemex Auditorium

Mid-Quarter Exam #2: Wednesday, May 17, 3:00-5:00pm in Hewlett 200
Mid-Quarter Exam #2: Wednesday, May 17, 7:00-9:00pm in Cemex Auditorium

Final Exam: Friday, June 9, 3:30-6:30pm (location TBD)
Final Exam: Friday, June 9, 12:15-3:15pm (location TBD)
 The earlier time is for those and only those students with another final exam at 3:30pm.


Exam #1 Specifics

Material covered: Exam #1 will cover all material through and including Lecture 6 (random variables and expectation). This includes everything on Problem Sets 1 and 2 and in Section Handouts 1 and 2.

Logistics: The CS109 Week 4 midterm is a two-hour, closed book, closed calculator/computer exam. You are, however, allowed to bring two pages (front and back) of notes, formatted in any way you like.

Answer Format: You are going to be solving probability questions by hand. To that extent we are not interested in numeric answers, but rather in formulaic answers. It is fine for your answers to include summations, products, factorials, exponentials, and combinations, unless the question specifically asks for a numeric quantity or closed form. Where numeric answers are required, the use of fractions is fine. You must show your work. Any explanation you provide of how you obtained your answer can potentially allow us to give you partial credit for a problem.

Practice material: Previous iterations of this course have had a midterm that may have covered slightly different material than you are responsible for. To help you practice the concepts for our Spring Quarter 2023 Mid-Quarter Exam #1, we have provided these previous midterms in whole. Feel free to post on Ed to clarify whether a certain question from a practice exam covers material that will be on this quiz.

Quiz #2 Specifics

Material covered: Quiz #2 will cover all material through Lecture 15's slide deck, Problem Set 4, and Section Handout 5.

Logistics: The CS109 Week 7 midterm is also two-hour, closed book, closed calculator/computer exam. You are, however, allowed to bring two pages (front and back) of notes, formatted in any way you like.

Answer Format: You are going to be solving probability questions by hand. To that extent we are not interested in numeric answers, but rather in formulaic answers. It is fine for your answers to include summations, products, factorials, exponentials, and combinations, unless the question specifically asks for a numeric quantity or closed form. Where numeric answers are required, the use of fractions is fine. You must show your work. Any explanation you provide of how you obtained your answer can potentially allow us to give you partial credit for a problem. In some cases, you may be asked to write code or analyze code I give you. Any code you write can be written in a pseudo-code version of Python, and we won't really assign any points to syntax.

Practice material: Previous iterations of this course have had a midterm that may have covered slightly different material than you are responsible for. To help you practice the concepts for our Spring Quarter 2023 Mid-Quarter Exam #1, we have provided these previous midterms in whole. Feel free to post on Ed to clarify whether a certain question from a practice exam covers material that will be on this quiz.

Essential Practice

  • Midterm Autumn 2019 [Soln]
    • Exam #1 Practice: 1, 4
    • Exam #2 Practice: All of the exam, in particular 2, 3b, 5
  • Final Autumn 2018 [Soln] - Note that this particular exam was challenging!
    • Quiz #2 Practice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7
  • Midterm Autumn 2018 [Soln]
    • Exam #1 Practice: 1, 3, 5a
    • Exam #2 Practice: All of the exam.
  • Midterm Autumn 2017 [Soln]
    • Exam #1 Practice: 1, 3a, 6 (Note: The last problem was challenging! Also note that the last problem can be solved from first principles without invoking the word 'Binomial', so it's still a useful problem to work through.)
    • Exam #2 Practice: All of the exam, in particular 2, 3b, 4, 5
  • Midterm Spring 2017 [Soln]
    • Exam #1 Practice: 1, 2, 3 (part 3c could be done without invoking geometric distributions)
    • Exam #2 Practice: 1, 2, 3, and 6
  • Midterm Spring 2016 [Soln]
    • Exam #1 Practice: 1, 2ab, 3
    • Exam #2 Practice: Everything except 4c and 5.