Written by Julie Zelenski

Logistics

The midterm will be held in-class Friday May 11th 12:30-1:50pm. There is no alternate exam.

We will be using two separate locations for the exam. You must attend at the location assigned to you by first letter of your last name.

• Last name begins with A-M: Cubberley Aud
• Last name begins with N-Z: NVidia Aud

If you have need of OAE accommodations, please email cs107@cs.stanford.edu with specifics and attach a copy of your OAE letter. Requests for accommodations must be initiated no later than five working days in advance of the exam.

SCPD students: Local SCPD students attend the regular on-campus exam. Those outside the Bay Area should have received email from us on what you need to do for on-site proctoring arrangements. If you did not receive that email, please get in touch with us ASAP at cs107@cs.stanford.edu.

One page of notes

The midterm is a closed-book exam and will be given in printed form. The exam will include a list of relevant function prototypes (see sample reference sheet) and you may bring one double-sided sheet of paper (size 8.5" x 11") prepared with your own printed and/or hand-written notes. No additional paper materials and no electronic devices/resources are be used during the exam.

Topics

The midterm is intended to assess your understanding of the content covered in the first half of the course. The coverage is through lab4 and assign4 but not beyond (i.e. midterm will not cover floating point nor assembly). The priority is on material that figured prominently in the assignments, labs, lecture, and reading (this list is in order of decreasing emphasis).

Sample problems

Below are three midterms+solutions from recent CS107 offerings.

• Midterm #1 (Fall 2017). This is the exam I mostly recently wrote, so is representative of my style and matches current course formulation.
• Midterm #2 (Winter 2018) This is last quarter's exam, written by Chris Gregg. Fits with current course but Chris has slightly different take than I do.
• Midterm #3 (Spring 2016) is from the last time Michael and I taught CS107 together. The CS107 course has evolved somewhat since then, so this exam a little more mismatched to current, but thought you still might appreciate it as another example.

Revisiting the labs, assignments and their post-task self-check questions may also be helpful. The K&R and B&O textbooks also contain many exercises if you want additional problems to work.

We hope that all the long hours you are investing in completing the assignments and labs has given you a growing mastery of the C language and a solid understanding of the memory model and representation of data on our system. If you come to the midterm ready to demonstrate that understanding, you are all set!

Further advice

Please also read my manifesto of exam advice and encouragement on how to prepare for and crush a CS107 exam. We'd love to see the Piazza forum come alive in helping everyone do their best on the exam – this is a great place to ask and answer unresolved questions, discuss conceptual issues, share techniques and materials you are finding useful as preparation, and support and encourage each other.

We're hoping for a great result for all on Friday!