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Re: Information About Exam 1

Dear CSCI-316 Students,

Exam 1 will be given on Monday, November 17.

The maximum score on Exam 1 will be 25 points, and 20 or 21 of the 25 points will be allocated to Lisp questions. As indicated in the “INFORMATION REGARDING EXAM 1” section at the end of this message, 16 or more of the 20 or 21 points allocated to Lisp questions will be allocated to questions or parts of questions that will test your ability to solve problems that are at least somewhat similar in nature to certain of the problems in Assignments 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 or test your ability to translate Scheme code (such as the Scheme code in my solutions to Assignments 3, 4, and 5, and Scheme code in the course reader) into Common Lisp. Some of those questions or parts of questions might be in multiple-choice or multiple-response format.

Other important information about the exam is provided below.

See you in class on Monday.

Information Regarding Exam 1

Exam Materials

As announced on p. 1 of the 1st-day-announcements document, during the exam students may refer to the course reader they purchased from the Queens College online bookstore provided there are no notes or other markings on any of its pages. No other documents may be used during the exam. (For example, photocopies of pages from the course reader will not be allowed.)

IMPORTANT: It is entirely possible that one or more of the questions on Exam 1, Exam 2, or the Final Exam will refer to information in the course reader, in which case students who do not have the course reader may be at a considerable disadvantage!

IMPORTANT: You must NOT use your own scratch paper during the exam, as there may be no way to establish that something was written during the exam (and not written before the exam). However, the pages of the exam “booklet” will have writing on one side only; YOU CAN USE THE BACKS OF ITS PAGES AS SCRATCH PAPER!

Point Allocation

The maximum score on the exam will be 25 points. Points will be allocated as follows:

20-21 points: Lisp Questions

Questions on Lisp. Those 20 or 21 pts. will include:

As you can see, the above-mentioned questions or parts of questions will account for AT LEAST 18 of the 20 or 21 points allocated to Lisp questions!

I STRONGLY recommend that you look over the Lisp assignments and study my solutions before the exam! Also make sure you know how to rewrite the Scheme solutions in Common Lisp.

4-5 points: Expression Syntax

One or more questions on expression notations and abstract syntax trees (ASTs). To prepare for such questions, you should be sure to do the reading and homework exercises assigned in the Syntax-Reading-and-Exercises PDF file on Brightspace.

NOTE: Any question that asks you to translate an expression from prefix, postfix, or infix notation to Lisp notation would be regarded as a question on expression notations, and NOT as a question on Lisp.

Important Exam Rules

  1. You may NOT use a phone or other communication device during the exam. (You may NOT even use a phone as a timepiece, because when someone looks at a phone I cannot be sure just how the phone is being used.)

  2. Calculators are NOT allowed.

  3. You may NOT leave the room for any reason without first submitting your exam for grading. (In particular, no restroom breaks will be allowed. Exceptions to this rule will be granted only if a medical necessity is adequately proven by, e.g., a doctor’s note. So please visit the restroom, if required, BEFORE you receive the exam.)

Study Materials

Solutions to the problems of Assignment 1 are given in Touretzky or in the assignment document itself. Solutions to Assignment 2 are given in the Solutions-to-Lisp-Asn-2 document on Brightspace. Solutions to Assignments 3 and 4 are available on mars—see my “solutions to Assignment 3” email of 10/22 and my “solutions+QUICKCHECK for Asn 4” email of 10/31. Solutions to Assignment 5 will be provided to you next week, after the assignment’s on-time submission deadline.

In preparing for Exam 1, you should be sure to study the above-mentioned solutions!

Note that the solutions to Assignments 3, 4, and 5 are/will be written in Scheme, but you must write in Common Lisp when answering exam questions. Make sure you know how to rewrite the Scheme solutions and other Scheme code in Common Lisp. The following two PDF documents provide important information on how to rewrite Scheme code in Common Lisp:

Copies of these two files are attached, and both files have been posted on Brightspace.

My email of October 17 listed some parts of Lisp that had been covered in class before that date or were covered in reading assigned on or before that date. Note that MAPCAR, REMOVE-IF, REMOVE-IF-NOT, LAMBDA, FUNCALL, APPLY, and tail recursion have been covered in class since that date.

Coverage Cutoff

Before Exam 1, students should have read the slides posted on Brightspace for all lectures through Nov. 12 except for the slides, if any, that come AFTER a slide from the Nov. 12 lecture that contains the red words ‘THIS IS THE “CUTOFF POINT” FOR EXAM 1’.

T. Yung Kong, D.Phil.
Professor
Computer Science Department
Queens College, CUNY
Flushing, NY 11367, USA