Tests

Midterms

We will have two 1-hour midterms, each worth 10% of your final grade. They are both scheduled on a Monday. They will take place at the same time as our normally-scheduled Monday lecture, but not the same room (see below). There will be no aids allowed.

If you are writing in the first section (12:10-13:00), you must stay to the end of the hour, even if you finish early. (After turning in your test, you are welcome to while away your remaining time by reading a book, doing a crossword puzzle, or with any other quiet activity that does not involve an electronic device.)

On the week of a midterm, there will be no tutorial. Instead, during what would normally be tutorial time, we will have a second hour of lecture in our normal lecture room (UC140).

Midterm 1 (Feb 3)

Our first midterm will be held Monday February 3, during the time that would normally be reserved for lecture.

The 12:10-13:00 midterm will take place in EX320 (the Exam Centre).

The location of the 13:10-14:00 midterm will depend on the first letter of your surname:

The midterm may test any content from the first three weeks of the course (i.e. various flavours of induction, and the principle of well-ordering).

Past midterms and other practice resources

Below are some links to past midterms from previous offerings of the course. These generally cover the same content that will be on our test (i.e. forms of induction and well-ordering), though different years may have had different focuses:

The best preparation for the midterm will likely involve reviewing lecture notes, problems from the tutorial exercises and quizzes, and the first assignment. It will also likely be helpful to work through extra practice problems. You can find some at the end of the induction chapter of the Vassos course notes. David Liu's course notes also include some good exercises at the end of the chapter on induction. If you're hungry for yet more examples, there are many good introductory textbooks on proofs which will have lots of induction examples - one good one I would recommend is "Concrete Mathematics" by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.

Solutions

t1_solutions.pdf

Midterm 2 (March 16) (March 23)

Below are links to midterm 2:

Solutions are available here.

Update (March 13): Due to the university-wide cancellation of in-person classes, the planned second midterm will not be written as planned on March 16. Details of any make-up assessment to replace it will be announced at a later time.

Update (March 15): An at-home midterm will be written March 23. See this page for details.

The second midterm will be held Monday March 16.

The 12:10-13:00 midterm will be written in EX320.

The 13:10-14:00 midterm will be written in EX200.

A copy of this 'cheat sheet' will be handed out with the test.

Past midterms

Below are some links to past midterms from previous offerings of this course

Note that these offerings had a heavier focus on recurrences than correctness, which is reflected in the distribution of test questions. We spent 3 weeks on correctness and 2 weeks on recurrences, so you should expect our midterm to have less weight on recurrences and more on correctness, compared to the examples above.

Exam

We were originally scheduled to write a final exam worth 41% of the final grade. In place of this, we will have a final take-home assessment worth 20%. In terms of length and content, this will be similar to a normal 3-hour 236 exam, but you will have 3 days to write it. Answers would be submitted to MarkUs (LaTeX not required).

The final will be released at 12:01 AM EST April 7, and due 72 hours later (i.e. April 10 at 12:01 AM). As with the quizzes and second midterm, it will be open book, but with no collaboration or consultation of online sources (aside from course materials).