Final Exam Information |
Fall 2010 |
The final will be held at 9:00am on Tuesday, January 18 in room 101 of the Friend Center. This will be a three-hour exam.
Although I hope it will not happen, there is always the chance that an exam such as this one will extend slightly longer than anticipated. If this will be a problem for you (for instance, because you have another appointment right after the exam), please let me know as soon as possible.
If you do better on the exam than the homeworks, then the final exam will be worth 35% of your final grade. Otherwise, if you did better on the homeworks than the exam, it will be worth only 25% of your grade.
The exam will be closed book. You may not use the text book, your notes, a computer or any other materials during the exam. However, you may bring a one-page "cheat sheet" consisting of a single, ordinary 8.5"x11" blank sheet of paper with whatever notes you wish written upon it. You may write on both the front and the back. However, it must be handwritten (not computer generated or photocopied) in your own handwriting. We may (or may not) collect these at the conclusion of the exam.
Also, be sure to bring a calculator. However, you may only use the basic math functions on the calculator (i.e., plus, times, log, sin, exp, etc.); you may not use any programming functionality, text storage or other advanced capabilities that might be built into your calculator. You may not use your cell phone or similar device as a calculator.
You will be at a significant disadvantage if you forget either the cheat sheet or the calculator . It is your own responsibility to remember to bring both.
Cell phones, laptops and all other devices that can be used for any form of communication must be completely turned off throughout the entire exam.
All students taking the exam must agree to be bound by Princeton's undergraduate honor code. This includes both undergraduate and graduate students, regardless of whether or not they are actually enrolled in the course. If you are unfamiliar with this honor system, please take a minute to read its terms here.
Here is a sample exam. The actual exam will be largely of the same format, but will be substantially longer. Solutions for the short-answer sections are available here. (Please let me know if you detect any errors.) Solutions for the longer problems at the end of the exam are not being provided, but you are welcome to ask me or the TA's or other students for help. See information below on the question-and-answer session.
The TA's will hold a special question-and-answer session on Friday, January 14 at 11am-12:20pm in room 104 of the CS building (our regular classroom). At this time, you are welcome to ask questions on anything covered throughout the course. You can also email them ahead of time with questions that you would like to see discussed.
In principle, anything covered in lecture or in the assigned readings is "fair game", including material covered at the very end of the course (such as EM and Q-learning), as well as the guest lecture. Realistically, you can expect that the emphasis will be placed on those same topics that were emphasized in lecture and on the homeworks.
Below is a list of topics, concepts and algorithms that you should be familiar with. I have attempted to make this an exhaustive list, although I cannot guarantee that I did not miss an item or two.