Exams
As stated on the syllabus: "The midterm and final exams are open
note. Students may consult any printed or handwritten materials
brought into the exam, and any static content stored locally on the
student's own device or on a Dickinson College server. No content
stored outside the College network may be consulted. Electronic
devices may only be used for browsing static content. Devices may not
be used to perform any other type of computation."
Exams will consist of a combination of true-false questions, short
answer questions, and questions requiring longer answers and/or
mathematical proofs.
Technically, exams may ask questions about anything covered in
class, in the lecture notes, assigned readings, or homework
assignments. In practice, however, a strong majority of questions
will be related to homework questions, or to examples covered during a
class lecture.
Exam 1
Exam 1 covers material from course topics 1, 2, and 3 -- that is, from
classes 1-6 inclusive.
Exam 2
Exam 2 covers material from course topics 4, 5, and 6 -- that is, from
classes 7-16 inclusive.
Final Exam
The final exam is cumulative, covering all topics with approximately
equal emphasis (except that topics 7-10 will have some extra emphasis,
since they were not covered in the in-class exams). The style of the
exam will be similar to the two in-class exams, including some
true/false questions, some short-answer questions, and some
proof-writing questions.
Note: When proving results in this exam, you may assume, without
proof, any facts that were stated or proved in class (unless the
question specifically states otherwise). For example, if it was
stated or proved in class that a certain computational problem is
undecidable, NP-hard, or NP-complete, you may use this fact in your
proofs. However, you must clearly state any fact that you use in this
way.