COS 226 Final Information, Spring 2014
This document is intended to help you use your study time effectively. Please
view it as a guide, not a contract.
You may also view the exam archive to study old questions.
Final Exam Schedule
-
Office Hours:
| DATE |
TIME |
ROOM |
PERSON |
| Sat 5/10 |
12:00-3:00 pm |
Tea Room (2nd floor CS) |
Nevin |
| Wed 5/14 | 11:00-11:59 am |
CS 001B |
Jenny |
| Thurs 5/15 | 11:00-11:59 am
1:15-2:30 pm
2:45-3:15 pm |
CS 312 |
Josh |
| Thurs 5/15 | 3:00-4:00 pm |
CS 207 |
Kevin |
| Fri 1/16 | 1:00-4:00 pm |
CS 001B |
Madhu |
| Sat 5/17 | 10:00 -11:59 am |
CS 001B |
Jenny |
| Sun 5/18 | 1:00-4:00 pm |
CS 004 |
Chris |
| Mon 5/19 | 2:00-4:00 pm |
CS 207 |
Kevin |
| Tue 5/20 | 3:00-5:00 pm |
CS 208 |
Guna |
| Tue 5/20 | 11:00-2:45 pm |
Outside CS 306 |
Josh |
| Tue 5/20 | 4:00-7:00 pm |
CS 004 |
Ruth |
There will be a review session TBA.
The final exam is from 1:30 to 4:30 pm on Wednesday, May 21st in McDonnell Hall A01 and
McDonnell Hall A02. Students in Thursday precepts (P01, P02, P03) will take the exam in A01;
students in Friday precepts will take the exam in A02.
Exam Format
- Closed book, closed note.
- You may bring one 8.5-by-11 sheet (both sides) with notes in your own
handwriting to the exam.
- No electronic devices (e.g., calculators, laptops, and cell phones).
Material Covered
We have covered an enormous amount of
material this semester, but the exam can only contain basic questions about a
small fraction of it. When you study, you should focus on understanding basic
issues, not memorizing details. For each algorithm, you should make sure that
you understand how it works on typical input and then ask yourself some
basic questions: Why do we care about this algorithm? How is it different from
other algorithms for the same problem? When is it effective?
The exam will stress material covered since the midterm,
including the following components.
- Lectures 13–23.
- Algorithms in Java, 4th edition, Chapters 4–6.
- Exercises 12–22.
- Programming assignments 6–8.
The midterm itself is fair game (did you take the time to understand
questions that you missed on that exam?).
Also, some material before the midterm is also relevant to
putting new algorithms in context. For example, you
might see a question on sorting/searching that covers both
standard and string algorithms.
Partial list of topics covered since the midterm
| Depth-first search
| Breadth-first search
| Topological sort
| Prim's algorithm
|
| Kruskal's algorithm
| Dijkstra's algorithm
| Bellman-Ford algorithm
| Ford-Fulkerson algorithm
|
| Key-indexed counting
| LSD radix sort
| MSD radix sort
| 3-way radix quicksort
|
| Knuth-Morris-Pratt substring search
| Boyer-Moore substring search
| Rabin-Karp substring search
|
| RE to NFA
| R-way tries
| Ternary search tries
| Reductions
|
| Run-length coding
| Huffman coding
| LZW compression
| Burrows-Wheeler
|
Questions that show awareness of advanced topics that were covered in lecture
are also fair game (for example, NP-completeness and 3-satisfiability).