Assessment 1. Mid-quarter exam

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 Tuesday November 1st 7-9pm.
  • Locations are assigned by first letter of your surname/family/last name.
    • If your last name falls between Aalami-Lee, you'll be in Hewlett 200
    • If your last name falls between Leitherer-Shin, you'll be in in Bishop Auditorium
    • If your last name falls between Siah-Zu, you'll be in 420-040
    • Students with special circumstances (SCPD, OAE, athletic conflicts) will receive an email from Head TA Neel with your arrangements.
  • You will write your answers directly on the paper exam.
  • The exam is closed-book and closed-device.
    • We will provide a reference sheet to jog your memory about the Stanford library 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 recursive backtracking. This means all content up through and including Lecture 13, Section 4, and Assignment 4.
  • 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. Here is a practice midterm and solution. This was the actual exam given in a recent quarter and should be mostly representative in scope, content, difficulty, and format to what you can expect on our exam.
  • Additional practice exercises
    • 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 textbook are another great source for practice.
    • The online coding practice site Code Step By Step has been recommended by past students as a useful tool. It offers many practice problems and autogrades your answers to give immediate feedback.
  • Review session A group of our fabulous section leaders will lead a review session on Sunday afternoon 10/30. See this Ed post for more info.

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!