The final examination will take place on 23 April at 9 am in the Sports Complex. Further information will appear here in due time.
The mid-term examination will take place on 20 February during the regular class time.
Recall that the examination is open book, meaning that you are allowed to use any kind of documentation. Electronic devices are not permitted. You are not allowed to share any material with your colleagues. Here you can find some generic information about open book exams. I strongly recommend that you (a) index well your material so that you can find the information you seek in short order and (b) ignore your material as much as possible (ideally, completely). If you stop every time to look things up you will most likely run out of time. Instead of bringing your textbook and/or lecture notes I also recommend that you prepare a few cheat sheets (no more than 4 pages) summarizing key concepts; this is going to save you considerable time during the exam.
The test covers formal languages namely, Chapter 7 to Chapter 11 from the textbook and the associated lectures and lecture notes. Sections 8.5 and 10.7 were not covered and so will not be tested.
The type of questions asked in the examination will be similar to the ones asked in Assignments 1 to 4, plus some small questions that will test the basic understanding of the concepts. You are encouraged to check out the exercises in the textbook for supplementary practice but you should already be fine if you participated in solving the assignment questions and you checked (or will check) your answers against mine. Note that assignment 4 will not be marked in time for the examination, but I will post my solutions on the 19th so that you can check them out against yours.
The test will be fast paced, leaving you little time to check out your notes, hence my advice to ignore said notes as much as possible and to prepare cheat sheets. If the assignment questions were asked in the test then the following are my expectations regarding the amount of time you would need to answer them:
The additional, general knowledge questions will be simple enough to be answerable in 5 minutes (I reserve the right to ask 10-minute questions, but the probability of those is low).
Obviously the test cannot cover all the types of questions asked in the assignments. Instead a selection of question types will be asked now, and the rest of the types will be relegated to the final examination.
Recall that the assignments can be done in groups of up to three students. All the collaborators must be currently enrolled in the course. A single joint solution must be submitted for each group, including the names and student numbers of all the collaborators.
Late submissions will be accepted subject to a penalty of 10% per day late until my solutions are posted on the course’s Web site (which can happen as soon as three days after the due date). No submissions will be accepted afterward.
It goes without saying that a correct answer with no justification will give you full marks (unless the justification is explicitly requested in the question), while an incorrect answer with no justification will give you no marks. However, there is also a middle ground: a justification that makes sense may give you partial marks even if the answer in incorrect. I therefore strongly encourage you to provide a justification for your answer even if such a justification is not explicitly requested.