CS 241 Midterm Exam Information - Winter 2020
Below is a list of useful information you should know
about the CS241 midterm exam.
1. The Prime Directive
In general we don't answer questions like "Do we need to
know about XYZ for the midterm?" or "Do I have to memorize
ABC?" You must use your judgment in deciding what to study. However, the midterm is less focused on
memorizing and more on understanding and applying the concepts
you have learned in the course.
2. Coverage
The midterm covers everything from the beginning of the
course up to (and including) top-down parsing (LL(1)).
3. When and Where
The exam is on Wednesday, March 4th
from 4:30-6:20pm..
It is 1 hour and 50 minutes long.
The exam rooms are STC 1012 and STC 0060. Please
follow this link to see where you will be writing
the midterm. (If you do not see any seating information, check
again at a later date.) Make sure you go to the correct
room!
4. Aids
Calculators and other aids are not permitted. You
will be provided with
a MIPS
Reference Sheet and
a Conversion
Chart.
5. Tutorials and Office Hours
Tutorials are cancelled the day of the midterm. Instead, course staff will be holding office hours during the tutorial times, in the same rooms that the tutorials take place:
- Victor: 9:30-10:20am, MC 4060
- Joshua: 10:30-11:20am, MC 4042
- Sylvie: 12:30-1:20pm, MC 2054
There is no office hour scheduled during the 8:30-9:20am tutorial in MC 4042.
Additionally, some office hours during the midterm week have been moved or cancelled:
-
Sylvie's office hours on Thursday, March 5, 1:30-3:30pm have been moved to Tuesday, March 3, 2:00-4:00pm. The room is still MC 4065.
- Joshua's office hours on Wednesday, March 4, 4:00-5:00pm are cancelled.
- Victor's office hours on Friday, March 6, 10:00-11:00am are cancelled.
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 the midterm review session exercises (see below) as practice.
- Look at the other material listed on the course homepage such as the Recommended Texts and various examples under Additional Reference Material.
- Think about what kinds of questions might be on the midterm. 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, NFAs, ε-NFAs, and CFGs.
- Trace through the LL(1) parsing algorithm with various grammars and words.
- 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.
7. Review Sessions
We will be having two 2-hour midterm review sessions on the following dates:
- Friday, February 28th, MC 2017, 4:00-6:00pm
- Monday, March 2nd, MC 2066, 6:00-8:00pm
The two review sessions will both cover the same material. The material will be a subset of the questions from the following midterm review problem set.
The slides from the review sessions are available here.
8. 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.