Midterm Exam — Instructions

Overview

This is the scored midterm for Introduction to Computer Science. It checks the first half of the course, Weeks 1 to 7, and the questions those weeks asked. What is a program, and how does the machine know what to do when you run one? How does a program remember a value, do math with it, and talk to a person? How does it choose which code runs? How do you make it repeat, and how do you make sure it stops? How do you package a piece of work once and reuse it?

The midterm has 25 questions, and every question counts the same. Most of them (19) ask you to select exactly one option. Three ask you to judge a true-or-false statement, and three ask you to select every applicable option. Every program a question asks about is printed in the question, and any output it mentions is written out as text.

Every question practices a skill you have already used in the weekly quizzes, lecture tutorials, and Coding Labs: read a program, predict what it prints, and name the error it raises. Nothing on the midterm comes from outside Weeks 1 to 7.

Coverage and scope

The midterm covers Weeks 1 to 7 and the course's first five objectives. Here is what the drawn form holds, objective by objective, with the weeks its questions come from:

• Programs, tracing, and error messages (Objective 1, 5 questions): 2 from Week 1, 2 from Week 2, and 1 from Week 3. Be ready to predict what a short program prints, to read an error from its last line, and to tell a SyntaxError, where nothing runs, from a runtime exception such as a NameError. Weeks 2 and 3 bring the same skill back with their own programs, along with the course habit of checking a claim about a program by running it.
• Values, types, expressions, and strings (Objective 2, 8 questions): 4 from Week 2, 2 from Week 3, 1 from Week 4, and 1 from Week 6. From Week 2, review operator precedence, the four core types, and the two kinds of division with the remainder and rounding. From Week 3, review converting typed text before arithmetic, and indexing with the IndexError it can raise. Week 4 adds comparing values of different types, and Week 6 adds walking a string one character per pass.
• Booleans and conditionals (Objective 3, 4 questions): all from Week 4. Be ready to read a truth table in the course's row order and to apply the priority not, then and, then or to a mixed line. Then find the one branch of an if, elif, else chain that runs, including the out-of-order elif chain the week warned about.
• Loops (Objective 4, 5 questions): 1 from Week 5, 3 from Week 6, and 1 from Week 7. From Week 5, review how a while loop stops, and what happens when nothing in its body moves it toward the stop. From Week 6, review range with a start, a stop, and a step, the exclusive stop, and counting the values a range produces. From Week 7, bring the same output-reading skill to a program that calls a function.
• Functions and scope (Objective 5, 3 questions): all from Week 7. Review how arguments bind to parameters by position, what a return value is, and the None a function that only prints hands back.

By week, the 25 questions come out like this:

Week 2 carries the most questions, 6 of the 25, so give variables, types, and expressions the most review time. Week 4 comes next with 5, then Weeks 6 and 7 with 4 each, Week 3 with 3, Week 1 with 2, and Week 5 with 1. By objective, values and types carry 8 questions, the largest share. Week 5's while loop has 1 question of its own, yet counters and stopping rules return in the Week 6 range questions, so it still deserves a pass.

By difficulty, 10 questions are easy, 12 are medium, and 3 are hard, so most sit at an easy or medium level.

Week 8's classic-bug checklist is not scored on its own. It still pays off, because many questions turn on one of its six slips. They are one equals sign where two belong, a stop that is left out, and true division giving a float. The other three are two strings joined instead of added, a function with no return, and a while loop with no update.

These notes map the skills the midterm checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.

Instructions

• Attempts: one. The midterm is a single scored attempt.
• Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
• Window: the midterm opens in the Week 8 module and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
• Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you move to the next.
• Materials: every program a question uses is printed in the question. The midterm checks what you can predict by reading the code, so scratch paper for a trace or a short sum is all you need. Unless your instructor announces otherwise, the midterm is closed-note.
• After you submit: Canvas shows your result. The keyed answers stay hidden so the midterm stays fair for every student.

Academic integrity

The midterm is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool, do not get help from another person, and do not share or post the questions during or after your attempt. These rules come from the course syllabus. The midterm confirms that you personally can read code, predict what it prints, and find a defect.

The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice exam, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the midterm word for word.

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