Final

Practice problems for the final

Please bring a BLUE PEN to the exam!

This is what the first two and last pages of the exam will look like.  Please read the instructions carefully, so that you can save the time during the exam, and so that you don't run into unnecessary difficulties due to not being aware of the instructions and rules.

Regarding the “have to justify your answers” guidelines

A couple of “last minute tips” on this; do check carefully the second page of the exam (see link above) for instructions. For some of the questions (the “explain why” or “show/prove that” sort of questions, the notion of “you have to justify the answer” does not apply.  For the rest, when nothing explicit is said, even if it says “show your work”, you can decide to just write the answer without justification, and that means that you will have a deduction of 20% the value of that question (1 or 2 marks, for questions worth 5 or 10 marks, respectively).

There are special cases in which the math or the procedure is so easy that can be done in our heads --- for those cases, it is explicitly said that you don't have to justify the answer (that's the case for two of the questions in the exam);

There are also special cases where the answer can be so trivially obtained by visual inspection that in those cases you're not allowed to write an answer without justification; obvious examples are: Shortest path in a graph; if you don't show the steps of Dijkstra's algorithm, obviously you can't expect partial marks (seeing the shortest path by visual inspection is too easy); same thing for minimum spanning trees (both Prim's or Kruskal's algorithms would have to be shown step-by-step).

In general, the instructions would say you must justify/explain/show your work (the use of the verb “must” is the key detail here). There are three questions that are in this category.

Please do keep in mind that if an answer is given with no justification, and the answer is not correct (as in 100% strictly equal to the correct answer), you get no part marks for that particular question.  You can try to be brief in your justifications, but try to avoid vague explanations or too general sentences that don't specifically explain why your answer is whatever it is.

TAs Office hours

Wednesday and Thursday, you can see the TAs for any assistance:

Wednesday: 4-5PM: Mahsa (DC-3577R);  5-6PM: Nima (DC-3577A)

Thursday: 11-12: Nima (DC-3577A);  2-3PM: Mehdi (DC-2542);  3-4PM: Keyvan (E5-5117);  4-5PM: Mahsa (DC-3577R);  5-6PM: Ahmad (E5-4111)

I will be available at least Thursday afternoon (say, from 1PM), but you can e-mail me if some other time works better for you

Midterm

Midterm grades

The formula for ID scrambling (hashing) is as follows:   Take last 6 digits of your student ID; multiply times 281; take last 7 digits of result.

View midterm grades

Midterm suggested solutions

These are some suggested solutions. Different solutions could be applicable and equally acceptable.

Practice questions for the midterm

Please remember to bring a PEN to the exam

This is what the first and last pages of the exam will look like.  You may want to take a look at it to be familiar with the instructions and rules before the exam (that way, you won't have to spend a single minute reading them; also, there would be no surprises when reading them during the exam).

For the midterm, see also course slides from Feb 17 (last class before the exam) for tips and information on the midterm.

In particular, do remember that there is a bonus marks question (2 points out of 100) on the article Getting it Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn (and do notice that it spans two pages).  I would think that there are none of you who thought that I was joking.  But in case there were: no, I was not joking!!

Office Hours during Reading Week

 TueWedThuFri
10AM - 11AM Mehdi (DC-2542) Teng (EIT-4129) Teng (EIT-4129) Teng (EIT-4129)
11AM - 12PM Keyvan (E5-5117) -- Keyvan (E5-5117) Keyvan (E5-5117)
1PM - 2PM Nima (DC-3577A) Nima (DC-3577A) Mehdi (DC-2542) Ahmad (E5-4111)
2PM - 3PM Nima (DC-3577A) -- Mahsa (DC-3577R) Mahsa (DC-3577R)
3PM - 4PM Ahmad (E5-4111) Mehdi (DC-2542) Ahmad (E5-4111) Mahsa (DC-3577R)

I will be available the whole week; normally, between 1PM and 3PM; e-mail me if some other time works better for you.

Announcements

About the “no questions allowed” rule

Digging up a little bit on this, I found out that it is not a departmental requirement, but rather, a recommendation.  The rationale being two-fold: (1) Avoid distractions/disruptions during the exam; and (2) As an “anti-cheating” technique — yes, quite unfortunately, there are those who ask bogus questions to the proctor(s) to distract them and allow their accomplices to then freely exchange/copy answers!

I actually see several additional inconveniences:

Now, again: to me, by far the most important consideration is the fact that asking questions is a disruption for those around the person that asks the question(s).

So, the rule will stand (including the penalty for not respecting it! remember that the idea is to avoid distractions/disruptions; so, answering with “what part of no questions allowed did you not understand” unfortunately is not enough (since the disruption already took place!). If there is no strong discouragement to ask the questions, then there will be questions with the side-effect of the disruptions!

However, in the spirit of addressing your concerns and in the spirit of compromising, I will include an extra page at the end with a short form to report problems (things like what some of you guys pointed out in class: what if there is a question missing? what if there is a page missing? what if a given question really is incorrectly written to the point that it simply is not possible to guess what you're being asked... etc.)

So, you will be allowed to call one of the TAs (or myself) and give them the form, in complete and absolute silence, so that I will personally look at it and address it if necessary.  If after reading it I believe that the request/report is unjustified, then I would ignore it.

Also importantly: do keep in mind that you can write any assumptions and answer the question based on those assumptions — if you make a reasonable case that the question was not clear, ambiguous, etc., AND if your assumption makes sense, there is no reason why you wouldn't get full marks for the question, even if your answer was not the answer originally expected.

Additional material – Course notes from Professor Harder

These include a few aspects beyond what we covered in class — needless to say that if we did not cover it in class, it will not appear in the midterm. Still, the notes should be useful, as it goes over the material in more detail than what I include in the slides.