Instructors' Office Hours

• Professor Verwaal will have office hours between 12 and 2pm on Wednesday, April 20 and between 10am and 12pm on Thursday, April 21.

• Professor Eberly will have office hours between 9am and 11am on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week (April 18–21) in MS 267.

Other Instructional Activities

There will be a CSUS Exam Review Session for CPSC 313 from 3–5 pm on Thursday, April 21, in ES 162.

Preparing for the Final Exam

The final examination will be held on Friday, April 22 between 8am and 11am in ICT 121.

True/false questions and multiple choice questions will cover material for the entire course. Open ended questions will cover that has been discussed in class after the midterm test.

No aids will be allowed. However, a list of undecidable problems will be provided with the test.

The exam will include a question asking you to use a reduction to prove that a decision problem is undecidable.

Recall that the later tutorial exercises and assignments (particularly, the final assignment) include problems that are similar to ones you might be asked to solve on the final examination. It might be helpful to look at these again when preparing for the final examination.

An examination review is now available online.

Advice about Writing the Final Examination

• Read questions carefully and completely, and ask for information if you do not understand them. Students often waste time (without earning marks) by misreading the question and answering a question that was not asked.

• Show us what you know. Sometimes, students have some idea about what is required to answer a question, or how they are supposed to solve the kind question that has been asked, without knowing a solution for the particular question that has been asked on a test.

  Under these circumstances, it is possible that part marks can be earned by providing information about what you are supposed to do (and how you are supposed to do it).

  It is generally not a good idea to provide a solution for a different problem of the same type, especially if this solution was presented in lectures, online notes, or the textbook: We are not interest in knowing how completely or well you are able to memorize things, and this is really all you are showing us when you do this!

  It is generally not a good idea to bluff or fake it, by including a “solution” that is incorrect without your saying so: The marker will usually notice the mistake, so that all that you have done is suggest that you did not know about the error (when you really did).

• Manage your time well. If you do not see how to answer a question right away, then it is usually a good idea to leave this question for the moment and spend time on questions that you can answer before you come back to this.

  Use the number of marks available for a question (compared to the number of marks available for the other questions on the test) to estimate the amount of time that should be needed to answer a question. If it seems like you need much more time than this, then you might have misunderstood the question (so that you should read it again) or that you might be providing a more detailed answer than is expected.

This page was most recently changed on Tuesday, April 19, 2005 by Wayne Eberly.