Final Guide

Basics

You will take the exam with other students from your section. You must take the exam at your section’s scheduled time, as there is not enough physical space in our classroom to fit additional students.

Section A: Date: December 14th
Time: 2:00PM-5:00PM
Location: 75 Shannon Room 224 (our classroom) Section B: Date: December 16th
Time: 9:00AM-12:00PM
Location: 75 Shannon Room 224 (our classroom)

Format: on paper
Questions might involve:

  • True/False
  • Multiple choice
  • Fill-in-the-blank
  • Writing code
    • From scratch
    • Fixing bugs in existing code
    • Re-ordering code to create a working function
  • Analyzing code or algorithms

Which resources are allowed for the exam? I will print the python cheatsheet that was provided with the midterm for each student. You may also bring one page of 8.5x11 paper with notes (double sided) to the exam. Otherwise, the exam is closed book, closed notes, closed computer, closed calculator, etc.

Is the exam cumulative? The exam will focus primarily on content that was covered after the midterm, but you will still need to apply the foundational concepts from the first half of the semester, and there may be a couple of questions that focus solely on those concepts. The main topics covered will be:

  • Image Processing
  • Representing Numbers
  • String Operations
  • Files (reading and writing)
  • Dictionaries, Tuples, and Sets
  • Object Oriented Programming
  • Applications: games, word representations (these might come up, but will not be a major topic)
  • Complexity and Sorting

How to Study

The best way to study for this exam is to try a lot of practice questions. Just reading over your notes or reading over solutions to practice questions probably will not lead to success on the exam.

Official Practice Exams

I am providing two practice exams, which are from 145 and 150. They have been edited slightly if necessary to reflect the exact topics that we covered in our class.

I recommend taking these practice exams as you would the real exam. Set aside 3 hours, start a timer, and close your notes. When you are done, compare your answers to the provided answer key and score your exam. This will give you an idea of what you need to study more.

Practice Exam #1: [exam] [solution] Credit: Michael Linderman

Practice Exam #2: [exam] [solution] Credit: Phil Chodrow

You will need to at least complete the reading for 12/5 to be fully prepared for one of the questions on practice exam #2!

Additional Practice Questions

In addition, the following links provide additional practice questions that were used in a sample exam for 145 in Spring of 2022. These questions do not focus as much on the second half of the semester, but they are still good practice and there are certainly a good number of questions that focus on topics that have been covered since the midterm!

Practice Questions: [questions] [solution] Credit: Andrea Vaccari

PrairieLearn

If there are PrairieLearn problems that you have not yet solved, they are a good way to study for the exam.