Motivation
The midterm exam is intended to gauge your comfort and facility with the content from the first half of the course. Since the course topics build on each other, confirming you have a good grasp of the foundations and identifying which gaps to shore up now puts you on a solid path to be ready for what comes next.
Logistics
- The exam is Thursday July 23rd from 7-9pm.
- The exam will be in Hewlett 200.
- Students with special circumstances (CGOE, OAE, athletic conflicts) will receive an email from Head TA Iddah with your arrangements.
- You will write your answers directly on the paper exam. Read here for why we choose to do this.
- The exam is closed-book and closed-device.
- We will provide a reference sheet to jog your memory about the basic Karel and Python functions.
- You also may bring your own prepared notesheet.
- The notesheet is one sheet of letter-size paper (8-1/2" x 11") where you have written/printed/drawn on both sides with whatever information you would like to have handy during the exam.
Coverage, practice materials
- Coverage. The exam will cover material from the start of the quarter through 2-dimensional lists. This means all content up through and including Lecture 9, Section 3, and Assignment 3.
- Format. Most questions will ask you to write a function or short passage of code that accomplishes a particular task. Other questions may ask you to read a provided passage of code and analyze or reason about its behavior. There may also be short answer questions to answer in prose.
- Practice: Below are actual exams given in recent quarters and should be mostly representative in scope, content, difficulty, and format to what you can expect on our exam. We recommend you take these exams with pen and paper under realistic conditions with a time limit and alone with only your note sheet and reference paper.
- Additional practice exercises
- Here is a set of extra practice problems you can work through that reviews midterm-relevant material.
- Revisit our section materials. We pack each weekly section handout with many more exercises that fit in the section meeting, so there are plenty of good options there. Section exercises are similar size and scope to those we use for exams (in fact, many section exercises originally appeared on exams in previous quarters).
- The exercises in the Karel Reader, Python Reader, and Online IDE are other great sources for practice.
- Review session A group of our fabulous section leaders will lead a review session in the coming week. Keep an eye out on Ed for more details.
Advice
We absolutely want you to come out on top! The lectures, sections, and assignments work together to guide you toward mastery of the course learning goals and the exams serve as an assessment of your progress. The absolute best outcome everyone has a great grasp on the material to nail the exam.
Read on for our advice on how to make that happen for you!
✨ You can do this! ✨