Quizzes

There will be five in-lab quizzes, each worth 5% 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 and links to prep material
Quiz Section N02 Section N01
Quiz 1 Mon Sept 23Wed Sept 25 everything prior to 'creating our own functions'
Quiz 2 Mon Oct 21Wed Oct 23 functions, if/else, input error checking, recursion
Quiz 3 Quiz available on VIULearn Nov. 6, due Nov. 18 loops, variable scope, pass-by-reference parameters
Quiz 4 Mon Nov 18Wed Nov 20arrays, searching/sorting, null-terminated char arrays
Quiz 5 Mon Dec 2Wed Dec 4structs, arrays of structs
*Reminder: VIU closed Monday Oct. 14 for Thanksgiving, classes ordinarily held on Mondays will be held on Tuesday Oct. 15th


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 (Dec. 10th, 1-4pm)

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 2024 Final Exam
Sections F23N01-F23N02 (Dr. Wessels)

  • PLEASE CLEARLY PUT YOUR NAME ON YOUR EXAM BOOKLET
  • You have 3 hours to complete the exam (1:00-4:00pm)
  • There are 9 questions on the exam, attempt all questions.
  • Questions are worth 10 marks each, for a total of 90 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).

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: Questions and content

The final exam will consist of a variety of question forms, generally chosen from formats similar to:

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:

The final exam questions tend to heavily emphasize the later material:

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).


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.

Old midterms (with solutions)
2018 midterm 1, 2018 midterm 2
2017 midterm 1, 2017 midterm 2
2016 midterm 1, 2016 midterm 2
2015 midterm 1, 2015 midterm 2

Old final exams
spring 2023 final
2018 final (with solutions)
2017 final (with solutions)
2016 final (and sample solutions )
2015 final (and sample solutions )