The exam will cover the entire semester. This includes most of the coursepack, but you will not be responsible for the slides from the bottom of page 268 to top of page 272.
In addition, details related to specific programming environments
(e.g., Berkeley DB or Hadoop) will not be tested. However, you
will be expected to solve problems related to those
environments. For example, you won’t need to write code using the
Hadoop Java API, but you should be able to solve map-reduce
problems by using pseudocode to specify the map() and reduce()
functions.
In addition, you should be comfortable with all of the query languages that we have discussed. We will be fairly generous when it comes to the finer points of syntax, but you should be able to write recognizable queries like the ones we covered in lecture, lab, and the assignments.
The exam will be held on Friday, May 9, from 12-2 p.m. in the following locations:
Please aim to arrive 10 minutes before the start of the exam.
Students with an exam-related conflict should have already notified Dr. Sullivan. Because our exam is being offered at the time that corresponds to our lecture time, exam-related conflicts should almost always be resolved by rescheduling the other conflicting exam.
The exam is NOT optional. It is worth 35% of your final course grade, regardless of how well you have done on the problem sets and midterm exams.
You must bring your BU ID to the exam, and have it verified when you turn in the exam.
The exam will consist of two parts:
Part I will contain multiple-choice questions that you must complete.
We strongly recommend that you bring a pencil and eraser for use on at least this part of the exam. There will be a “bubble sheet” for the multiple-choice answers that will be graded automatically by Gradescope. You will need to ensure that your final answer for each question is the only one that is bubbled, and thus we recommend using pencil so that you can erase answers as needed.
Part II will consist of several multi-part problems. It is possible that you may have some choice in this section (e.g., complete 4 out of 6 problems, or 6 out of 7). Show your work on Part II so that partial credit may be awarded as needed.
You will have two hours to complete the exam. The questions will be worth a total of 100 points. You should plan on spending approximately one minute per point.
You may use one 3-inch by 5-inch index card with handwritten notes (both sides). However, you must use a card that we provide. These cards will be distributed in lecture. If you aren’t able to get one in lecture, they will be available in the CS office (CDS 639) on weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm. Please turn your card in with your exam.
You may not use any other materials during the exam. In particular, you must turn off and put away cell phones, watches, ear buds, and other devices.
You should either use a pencil (recommended, especially for Part I) or a pen with blue or black ink.
You may not leave the exam room and return, so please use the restroom before the exam.
The exam will include questions similar to the ones posed in the pre-lecture and in-lecture exercises–both the Top Hat questions and the open-response ones.
In addition, there will be questions that ask you to solve problems similar to the ones from the problem sets and labs.
One thing that we highly recommend is to review the coursepack and make a summary of the key points in your own words. “Boiling down” the material in this way is a great way to ensure that you really understand the key concepts.
We also encourage you to do practice problems. Options include:
redoing the pre-lecture quiz questions. They are available as review problems on Top Hat, and you can check whether you obtain the correct answers.
redoing the questions posed in lecture–both the TopHat questions and the open-response ones–and in lab
Note: These problems are not comprehensive, so please make sure to do a thorough review.
Feel free to post questions on Piazza (using the final_exam tag)
or to email the course account (cs460-staff@cs.bu.edu).
Last updated on April 30, 2025.