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General format: the exam will be posted on Blackboard. You download it. Answer questions. Upload your answers back. All in the presence of the proctor.
Answering questions: you can use a number of methods to write your answers. This is the most significant difference from the midterm. A note was posted about this earlier. If something is not readable, it will not be graded.
Cheat sheets: you are allowed cheat sheets. Same rules apply as the midterm. You need to submit them to be an hour before the exam starts.
Exam format: it will be similar to the midterm. You will have an extra hour. (4 hours total).
Coverage: explained before.
What's new? You have more time and you can write faster (according to you). Therefore you need to show work. Be rigorous. It is not enough that you have the right answer. You need to show how you obtained the answer. Everything needs to be defined clearly to minimize misinterpretations of your methods/solutions.
* If you are taking the 2 part exam, you will have 6 hours.
In case you were wondering how you did on the quiz, grades aren't up yet but you'd probably benefit from the solutions. Attached with this post.
The quiz will be emailed to Thursday night. You will have a fixed amount of time to finish it and submit it back to me. You can use any input method you wish to write your answers. Just return a readable form to me. There will be no cheat sheets. It's closed "sources" (book/notes/internet/ etc). The coverage of the quiz includes probability I-IV and topics afterwards.
The timing is not very strict as long as its not all over the place. So please feel free to post when you'd like to receive the quiz (and thus, when to start the clock) and I will arrange it.
Let me know if you have any questions. If you think the class can benefit from it, start a followup discussion below.
Besides the material after the midterm, here are some areas you should not avoid studying.
The Master Theorem and Asymptotics (you need to master this. no pun intended.)
Graph Theory: coloring, planarity, representation
As for the material after the midterm, you should know everything in weeks 12 and 13 in and out. As for trees, you need to know their basic properties and about tree traversal as well as spanning trees.
As I mentioned earlier, this doesn't mean I will not ask from other topics.
I posted your last lecture. As mentioned in the outline, please note that questions from this week will not go in depth given that you do not have time to study and you are already stressed out. If I do ask a non-trivial question, it will be for extra credit.
1) Time of the quiz. Some of you said you have class on Wednesday. How about Thursday? We can move the quiz to Thursday, at least for those who have a conflict with Wednesday?
2) Quiz grading. You will have two grades: one without the quiz out of 85, one with the quiz out of 100. I will take the max as your final grade. thus, if you wish to NOT take the quiz, your overall grade will not be affected negatively. Note that taking the quiz could raise your grade by ~3-8% if you perform much better on the quiz compared to the rest of the semester. For instance, if your grade is 60 out of 85 (70.5%), and you get a 100 on the quiz...then your grade will be an 75 out of 100.. about 4.5% higher. The goal is to not punish you but to give you more evaluations.
3) About the final... You need to tell me NOW whether you want the 2 part final or just a regular final. Remember that I gave you the option of essentially taking a 2 part exam where the extra part would replace your midterm grade. If you intend to do this, let me know now. However, note that the exam will be much longer (5 hrs?) and proctorU will charge you based on that. This is entirely optional.
You will have a quiz this week on Wednesday. This will act as a preview of the final for the material covered after the midterm. You will have 2 hours to complete the quiz. A poll of suggested time will follow.