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 basic recursion.

Remember that you can access all of the relevant pre-lecture videos and lecture notes in the Lectures section of the course’s Blackboard site.

The exam will be held on Wednesday evening, February 20.
The exam will run from 6:30-8:00 pm in the following locations in LAW AUD lecture hall in the LAW building:
For students with special accommodations, TBA
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.
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 from multiple choice, fill in the blanks, tracing code, finding errors, and short answer questions.
In addition, there will be questions that ask you to write a method or a short program, similar to the problems from the homework.

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 questions from the pre-lecture quizzes. They are all available for review in Top Hat.
- redoing the questions from lecture–both the Top Hat questions and the open-response ones. The online lecture notes include both the questions and–on the next slide–the answers.
- 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 IDLE 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 to email the course instructor.