Mid-Term Trial Exam

On Friday, December 18, 16 - 18 h we had a mid-term exam in HS 00-026. According to the participants wish it was a pure trial exam, which does not in any way count for the final mark. Otherwise, it was of the same kind as the final exam will be, see the rules below for details.

Here is a PDF of the mid-term exam

Here are the solutions of the mid-term exam (please note that there could be few small mistakes)

There will also be master solutions for the mid-term. They will be posted some time before the first lecture after the winter break. If you did not participate in the exam on Friday, I would strongly recommend that you sit down for two hours and try to solve the exam under the same conditions as in the exam on Friday; see the rules below. From the master solutions, you can then check for yourself approximately how much points, and accordingly which grade you would have achieved.

Results

11 people participated in the exam. There were five tasks, each worth 10 points. Out of these five tasks you could choose four. If you would do five tasks, we would select those four where you got the most points. The maximal number of points to reach was therefore 40. With 20 points you pass. The detailed assignment of points to grades was set as follows (after the exam):

The marks achieved by the 11 participants were: 1.0, 1.3, 2.0, 2.0, 2.3, 2.3, 2.7, 3.3, 4.0, 5.0, 5.0. To see which grade you got (if you participated), see your personal page, where you otherwise upload your exercise solutions and where you also find the points which you got in the exercises. You will have a chance to look at the exam, and ask questions in the first tutorial after the winter break, which will be on Tuesday, January 12.

I believe that the exam was more than fair, rather a bit on the easy side. We don't plan to make the final exam harder than this (there will be more tasks and more time though, but the average size of a task will be about the same, and so will be the average time you have for a task). I think that most people went into this exam without too much preparation, so if this would have been the final exam, the grades would have probably been slightly better. Still, the grades listed above follow the typical distribution for an exam. The assignments of grades to marks is also very canonical: half of the points = 4.0, and from there one sub-grade (0.3 or 0.4) better for every 2 points until somewhat below the maximum.

The rules of the exam

1. It's an open book exam, that is, you can bring and use any amount of books, papers, etc. In particular, printout of the lecture slides, exercise sheets, your solutions, etc. Also any amount of private annotations and the whole CS library if you want. You won't need much for the exam though. I think what will be most useful are the slides, so that you can look up the basic definitions of stuff, in case you forgot them, and your solutions of the exercise sheets.

2. You are not allowed to use any computing devices, mobile phones, etc. In particular, you are not allowed to communicate with others or in any way connect to the Internet or something like that. You won't need a pocket calculator. In case you need to compute log_2(10/7), we will tell you what it is. Things like 2 * 0.5 or log_2(10/5) you should be able to compute by yourself.

3. Expect one or two tasks where you have to write code for some small functions. For example, a binary search in a list of strings. (No, that will not be a task of this exam.) You can use any of the standard languages: Java, C++, C#. Python and PHP are also ok if you absolutely must. Or you can also use pseudo-code. Anyway, you will be asked to write only relatively simple functions, which do not require any involved language-specific things. You should know basic data structures like arrays, lists, and hash tables though.

4. The material covered is simply everything that we did in the lectures and in the exercises, and nothing beyond that. Note that if you haven't really understood a topic, and then comes a task about that topic, you won't have enough time to go to the slides, understand it, and then solve the task. That is, you should have a basic understanding of everything we did, before the exam. If you did all the exercises, and did them well, chances are high that you have that understanding.

5. In the trial exam there will be 5 tasks of which you have to solve 4. Given that the total time for the exam is 2 hours, this means that you will have 30 minutes for each task on average. We will not be super-strict with the time, that is, if it's 6 pm and you need a little longer that is fine.

6. The exam questions will certainly be significantly easier than most of the questions in the exercises. And this is how it should be if you ask me. For the exercise you have time to think deep about certain problems, deal with the gory details of things, etc. and this is how one learns / understands stuff. In the exam, you should prove that you have understood all the stuff we did, no more and no less. There will, of course, be tasks that require some thinking, but no deep thinking. In particular, you won't have to prove that P != NP, or that Primes is in P.

7. This is a pure trial exam, which will not influence your final mark in any way. We will correct the exam like the real thing though and give you real marks, so that you get an impression of where you stand.

1. - 6. will also hold true for the final exam in this or very similar form. 7. obviously not.

These were the questions and comments about the mid-term exam

People who come: Markus, Mirko, Eric, Zhongjie, Björn, Alex N, Claudius

Yes, but those who can come, please show up, otherwise we will be very pissed. Consider it as a regular lecture slot, which we just postponed by one day, because of the Weihnachtsvorlesung. Hannah 18Dec02 1:33am

Me too i couldn't be there on friday. Very nice that the exam will be post on the wiki Achille

Hi Manuela + all: yes, if you want you can write down the solutions in German. As for the date of the final exam, I would suggest that we talk about that in the first lecture after the christmas break (Thursday, January 7), and then we make a decision within a week. I will also present a summary of all your valuable feedback in that lecture and give you my comments on it. Hannah 17Dec09 15:15

Yes, after the exam is over, we will post it on the Wiki. Would be great if as much people as possible could come though. There are also one or two free slots to write the exam on Friday morning (11 am - 1pm) in our rooms in building 51. If you are interested, contact me by E-Mail. But, as I said, that can be at most 1 - 2 people, and is only for those who absolutely can't come in the afternoon because they have to take a train / plane / whatever. Hannah 17Dec09 15:01

It seems that I'm not there on friday. Can I find the exam on the wiki that I can do it at home? Alex

Thanks for changing the date of the trial exam. I'd like to know if we are allowed to solve the tasks in German especially in the final exam. When will we get the date of the final exam? Manuela 17Dec09 7:56am

To Eric + all: I asked people in the last lecture, and the majority didn't want that the trial exam counted at all for anything. So that's how it is, it doesn't count for anything. Concerning your second question: yes, the final exam will also be open book. Indeed, as I wrote above, the final exam will be very similar to the trial exam, except that, guess what, there will be different tasks in the final exam, and the final exam will probably be a bit longer (three hours instead of two). That is exactly one purpose of this trial exam, that you know what to expect in the final exam. Hannah 17Dec09 1:54am

Two Questions: 1) Does this mean the mark won't count as an exercise sheet? And though won't count for anything. It is just to get an impression where we stand and how the final exam will be? 2) Will the final exam also be "open book"? Eric