Information on the Midterm Exam

Ground rules

The midterm exam will be on Thursday, February 11 at 6:30 pm in LSC 100. Note: It is not where we have our lectures.

You will normally have up to three hours, but the exam is designed to take much less than three hours. If you are still making progress after three hours, I will let you work up to a couple of hours longer.

If you cannot take the exam at 6:30 pm on February 11, you must contact me by email by 5:00 pm on Monday, February 8.

You may bring a crib sheet to the exam, subject to the following restrictions. The crib sheet must be a single sheet of paper, 8.5 by 11 inches at the largest. You may write on both sides of the sheet. You may write whatever you like. If you would rather type your sheet you must use at least a 10 point font.

We expect to have the graded exams back to you in lecture on February 12.

Review sessions

There will be a review session at x-hour on February 11. Attendance is completely at your option. Come for as much or as little of it as you like.

Exam format

Read each question carefully and answer everything asked of you. Please please please read each question carefully. Many students have lost points on past exams simply because they did not read the questions carefully.

The exam will have a few short-answer questions and a few longer questions that may ask you to write some Java code.

What you should know

I will expect you to know everything we have covered up through and including the material we cover on sets and maps in lecture on Friday, February 5.

Don't forget that you can link to the official lecture notes for each lecture from the schedule page.

Suggested strategy

I suggest the following strategy when taking this exam:

1. Read over the entire exam.
   
2. Answer the questions in the order in which you feel most comfortable.
3. Take a short break. Maybe leave the room. Maybe even go outside and get a little fresh air.
4. Come back and look over your exam carefully and critically. Have you answered all the questions as completely as you can? Are your answers correct? Have you done something foolish, such as using uninitialized variables? Are your answers written neatly enough that your grader will be able to read them?
5. Hand it in.
6. Go have fun. I only ask that you do so far enough from the exam location so as to not taunt your classmates who are still working on the exam.

Sample exams

I have linked the Winter 2012 and Fall 2014 midterms to the exams web page. I have also linked the solutions to these exams. Finally, I have linked a mini-manual of java-doc like documentation for classes that I think you might need. You will get a copy of this with the exam, so need not record this information on your crib sheet. I may supplement these with additional classes on the actual exam.

I recommend taking the sample exams before looking at the solutions.