Midterm 1 Information

Material covered

The exam will focus on the material that we have discussed in lecture from the beginning of the semester through the material on the basics of recursion. You won’t need to write a recursive method on this exam, but you should be able to trace the execution of an existing recursive method.

Remember that you can access all of the relevant (and detailed) lecture material and notes in the post-week notes folder in each of the corresponding weekly folders found in the Lectures section of our class Blackboard site.

Exam details

• The exam will be held from 6:30-7:45 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5th, in the following locations:

  • students with accommodations: CDS 948
  • all other students:
    • students with last names A-I: PHO 206
    • students with last names J-R: CGS 511
    • students with last names S-Z: CGS 505

• You must bring your BU ID to the exam, so that we can check it when you turn in your exam.

• You will have 75 minutes for the exam.

• You may not use any materials during the exam. In particular, you should turn off cell phones and other electronic devices and put them away.

• You should either use a pencil (recommended) or a pen with blue or black ink.

• Once you leave the exam room, you may not return, so please use the restroom ahead of time.

• The exam will consist of a variety of questions. Possible question types include: multiple choice, fill in the blanks, short answer, code tracing, and finding errors in existing code.

  In addition, there will be questions that ask you to write a method or a short program – similar to the problems from the homework, but on a smaller scale.

Preparing for the exam

• One way to prepare is to review the pre-lecture materials and lecture notes and make a summary of the key points in your own words. “Boiling down” the material in this way is a great way to ensure that you really understand the key concepts.

• We also encourage you to do practice problems. Options include:

  • redoing the in-class exercises found in the lecture notes

  • redoing the lab exercises, the solutions for which are available on the Labs page

  • some additional practice problems
    (Note: Solutions to these additional practice problems will be posted under Other Content on Blackboard as we get closer to the exam.)

  • questions from Practice-It about topics that we have covered in lecture

  When working on practice problems, try to come up with your answers on paper, rather than through a trial-and-error approach on VS Code or in another programming environment. This will give you an experience that is similar to the one that you will have during the exam.

• Feel free to post questions on Piazza (using the midterm_exam1 tag) or email your class instructor.