Quizzes
There will be five in-lab quizzes, each worth 6% of the final grade.
Quizzes are hand written (paper/pencil) within the lab. Most quiz weeks we will begin the quiz after some discussion of the current take-home assignment, likely
at about 3:15. Following the quiz students are welcome to stay and work quietly
on the assignment while other students complete the quiz.
Quizzes are closed notes and closed book, but the student is permitted to bring one
double-sided 8.5"x11" cheat sheet.
Missed quizzes: the student's final exam mark can be used to substitute for
one lower quiz mark and for any quizzes missed with suitable
documentation (e.g. doctor's note).
Individual work: as with all work in this course, quizzes and exams must
be strictly individual efforts. The student is not permitted to seek or accept
assistance from other individuals in completing any portion of the quiz.
Similarly, students are not permitted to provide assistance to other students
in completing any portion of the quiz/exam. Note that VIU policies consider
both parties to be committing academic misconduct in such situations,
and both parties may incur the resulting penalties. The use of AI tools (e.g. chatGPT) to generate whole or partial solutions is not permitted.
| Quiz dates (times 3:15-4:15pm for both) | Tentative topics |
| Quiz | Section N02 | Section N01 |
| Quiz 1 | Mon Sept 23 | Wed Sept 25 | everything prior to 'creating our own functions' |
| Quiz 2 | Mon Oct 14 | Wed Oct 16 | functions, if/else, recursion |
| Quiz 3 | Mon Oct 28 | Wed Oct 30 | loops, scope, parameters |
| Quiz 4 | Mon Nov 18 | Wed Nov 20 | structs, arrays |
| Quiz 5 | Mon Dec 2 | Wed Dec 4 | linked lists |
Final exam
The final exam will be worth 40% of your total grade and will be held in person
in the gym during the scheduled VIU exam period (date/time TBA)
The exam must be written at the time/location specified.
Exceptions will only be made for officially documented illnesses or
emergencies, in which case the student is expected to contact their
instructor as soon as possible and arrange
for a make-up exam to be taken as soon as possible. The
make-up exam will NOT be the same exam given to the rest of
the class.
The final exam is closed notes, closed book, no dictionaries,
calculators or electronics permitted. The use of earplugs/protection is permitted,
but the use of headphones/headsets (with or without connected devices) is not.
The student is permitted to bring one double-sided "cheat" sheet to the exam.
This does not have to be hand-written.
Here is a sample cheat sheet,
you're welcome to use this one or expand on it.
I did cram a lot in, but no promises it has everything you'll want on it :)
A copy of the exam rules is given here:
CSCI 159: Fall 2023 Final Exam
Sections F23N01-F23N02 (Dr. Wessels)
- PLEASE CLEARLY PUT YOUR NAME ON YOUR EXAM BOOKLET
- You have 3 hours to complete the exam (9:00-12:00)
- There are 6 questions on the exam, attempt all questions.
- Questions are worth 10 marks each, for a total of 60 marks.
- Answer in the exam booklets provided, extra booklets are available if needed.
- The exam is closed book, closed notes*, no calculators, phones, or other electronic aids
of any form may be used during the exam.
*You are permitted one 8.5"x11" double sided sheet of notes
- The use of ear plugs/protection is permitted, but NOT the use of
headphones or headsets (with or without attached devices).
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In addition, by now you should all have received an email from the Registrar's office
outlining rules for writing exams in the gym. Some of the key points in that include:
- You must display your student card or other valid photo ID on your exam table.
- You must turn off your cell phone for the duration of the exam. In the event of an
emergency you may be contacted through the Registration Centre at 250-740-6400.
- You may not enter the gym more than 30 minutes after the exam has begun. You will
be unable to write the exam.
- You many not bring your backpack, briefcase or large back to the exam table or place
them on the floor by your exam seat. You must leave these items at the side of the gym
before taking your seat. Unfortunately there is no secure storage in the gym for valuables.
Questions and content
The final exam will consist of a variety of question forms,
generally chosen from formats similar to:
- show the precise output from the following C++ program...
- given a set of compiler error messages,
identify all the syntax errors in the following C++ program...
- write a complete and correct C++ program to do the following...
- write a C++ function to do the following...
- modify the following program or function to do the following...
- given the prototypes for a set of functions, write a function that
uses them to do ...
- explain the benefits and drawbacks of the following language feature...
- discuss the appropriate use of the following language feature...
Note that linux/git will not be explicitly tested on the exam.
In general I assume that by now students are fully fluent with material from the
first half of the course, most of which will be required to successfully
answer almost any question:
- basic C++ syntax rules,
- operators and assignment,
- input/output with cin, cout, cerr,
- libraries and #includes,
- core data types: short, int, long, float, double, char, bool
- variables and constants,
- functions, parameters, and return values,
- if/else statements,
- loops (for, while, and do-while),
- variable scope (global vs local).
The final exam questions tend to heavily emphasize the later material:
- recursion,
- arrays,
- sorting and searching (bubblesort, binary search, linear search),
- null-terminated char arrays and the cstring library functions (strcpy, strlen, etc)
- basic use of the string class,
- structs and arrays of structs,
- pointers and dynamic allocation of arrays and structs,
- perhaps a general/theory question about linked lists.
The final will consist of 8-10 equally-weighted questions,
though some of those questions will have multiple parts.
A review session will be held prior to the final exam, and the material covered
will consist of course all material up to and including the review session,
including all lectures, labs, lab exercises, quizzes, etc.
You will be expected to understand, debug, and write logically
and syntactically correct C++ programs or code segments using
the language features discussed in labs and lectures to that point.
The best way to prepare is to hone your fluency in C++,
i.e. by doing the labs and assignment and writing lots of small practice
programs.
Practice questions from past lab sessions
A collection of past practice questions and sample solutions can be found
here (currently a dozen
questions drawn from key topic areas).
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OLD MIDTERMS AND EXAMS
The old midterms/exams below are from CSCI 160 versions of the course, with more
of an emphasis on printf/scanf instead of cin/cout and using malloc/free rather
than new/delete, but many of the question ideas/topics are still relevant.