Exams
My exams are generally cumulative: anything we’ve covered in the course up to the point at which you take the exam is fair game. I may also include questions about assigned mandatory readings, homework assignments, or any other class content that you are supposed to have viewed. Notably, this does not generally include the “Your Choice” readings: I don’t expect you to have read all of those, so questions about them will always offer you a choice of which reading to answer a question about. See the “Your Choice” readings page for more information about how the “Your Choice” readings will be assessed on the exams.
My exam design philosophy is to aim for a wide range of question difficulties: I try to include both some questions that I think every student should get right and some questions that I think are difficult enough that only those who have deeply understood multiple concepts that we covered in class will even be able to answer them in a reasonable way, and everything in between.
To help you prepare for this semester’s exams, below you can find links to two exams from last semester (a practice exam that I distributed before the final, and the actual final exam), both of which have solutions (“keys”). Both of these exams cover the whole course, so you’ll want to be careful when studying for the mid-term—not everything on these exams will have been covered by then. Hopefully, these exams will give you a good idea of the sort of questions that I like to ask on exams.