Exams

Two exams, the same instrument at two sizes, worth 30 points together. Each draws its questions at random from work you have already done: the after-class self-checks and the weekly take-homes. Nothing on either exam is new. What an exam adds is that you answer unaided, in the room.

The Wednesday session in Week 9 is reserved for the midterm. Laptop setup starts at 2:20 PM, and the planned test is 2:40–3:10 PM, administered by the TA. You may leave after your submission is verified. Existing accommodation arrangements apply. The registrar sets the final’s exact slot, which goes on Canvas as soon as it is published. There is nothing else at the end of the term: no project, no presentation, no third exam.

How an exam runs

1. You open it in Canvas, in Respondus LockDown Browser, on the laptop you installed it on. Set that up early in the term, not in the week of an exam; see Software & setup.
2. Canvas draws your questions at random from a pool covering every week the exam reaches, so your draw is not your neighbour’s.
3. You answer them unaided, with the Canvas calculator. Multiple choice and numeric entry, the same formats the self-checks use. You won’t need Excel and you won’t be able to open it.
4. Bring nothing else. No workbook, no notes, no file. Whether you submitted any particular take-home has no bearing on either exam.

Every question is worth half a point, and most of it grades itself, so your score is back quickly.

AI use. Tier 0: unaided. No AI during an exam, and nothing from an exam goes into a chatbot afterward. See Using AI.

What the questions are drawn from

• The after-class self-checks, as written. Every question you can practise on a week page is eligible, and they sit on this site with their answers all term. Retrying them until they are easy is the revision.
• The weekly take-homes. The models you built, asked as short questions: what a shadow price meant, which constraint turned out not to bind, what moved when the smoothing constant changed.

The final includes everything the midterm covered, so revising in October is still worth something in December. Week 16 is a review week and ends with a cumulative self-check for finding the soft spots.

If you miss one

Unlike a group practice, an exam is not simply forfeited. A documented conflict, an illness, a university-recognised exam-schedule conflict, an approved AES accommodation, or a religious observance arranged in advance all get a make-up. Contact us before the exam wherever that is possible.

This is the one place the course can be flexible about a missed assessment, and it is deliberate: the practices and take-homes are spread across the term so no single absence costs much, while the exams are few enough that each needs a real path back.

Why there are two

An exam asks one question: can you do this yourself, on the spot, with no help? That is what lets the rest of the course be generous about tools. Nothing here is hidden, so if you worked through the material an exam costs you nothing. Two rather than one means the October exam tells you where you stand while there is still a term left to fix it.