CS 241 Final Exam Information - Fall 2019

1. The Prime Directive

In general we don't answer questions like "Do we need to know about XYZ for the final?" or "Do I have to memorize ABC?" You must use your judgment in deciding what to study. I will say, however, that the final focus is less on memorizing and more on understanding and applying the concepts you learn in the course.

2. Coverage and Excluded Material

Everything that has been covered in the course, including the material covered before the midterm, with emphasis on material since the midterm. All programming questions will be either course specific (MIPS, WLP4), in pseudo-code, or will allow a choice of Racket or C++.

3. When and Where

The exam is on Thursday, December 19th, 2019 from 9:00 am to 11:30 am (150 minutes) in PAC 1, 2 and 3.

You can find out where you will be sitting at this link.

4. Aids

• CS241 Winter 2019 Final Exam Reference

4. Review Sessions

We will be holding two 2 hour review sessions on the following dates:

• Friday, December 13th, 4:00-6:00 pm in MC 2065
• Monday, December 16th, 4:00-6:00 pm in MC 2065

5. Office Hours

We will be holding office hours during the week prior to the exam. Please check the calendar on the course homepage.

Students are welcome to email either the instructors or the ISA in order to schedule appointments outside of the scheduled office hours.

6. Ways to Study

• Reflect critically on your lecture notes. Understand the big picture and the low-level details.
• Look back at the assignments, your solutions and how you got to your solutions.
• Use the tutorial exercises and previous exams as practice.
• Also look at the other material listed on the course homepage such as Recommended Texts and various Additional Reference Material such as MIPS examples.
• Think about what kinds of questions might be on the final. Invent some of your own exam questions and share them with friends.
• Write and test actual MIPS code.
• Develop concrete examples of regular expressions, DFAs, and NFAs with and without epsilon transitions.
• The topics we cover in this course are also covered at other universities. Consider viewing YouTube videos and lecture notes from these sources. If they are solving a problem, freeze the video or don't look ahead in the notes and see if you can solve it yourself.
• Use the WLP4 grammar or a sample grammar (available through the lecture notes) to do parsing exercises.
• Implement a new language feature in WLP4 by extending the grammar and modifying the compiler components you built in assignments. This exercise will test your understanding of much of the post-midterm material.
• Take advantage of office hours to ask your professors or ISA about course material!

7. Questions During the Exam

To ensure that no student is unfairly advantaged, proctors will not answer questions individually during the exam. If you feel that a question contains an error, raise your hand. A proctor will bring the concern to the instructors and an announcement will made if necessary.