Midterm1

As stated in the course website (and our first lecture), the first midterm is on March 3. I would like send a quick note on the logistics and what you might expect in the exam.

• Time: 10:15am, March 3, 2026.
• Location: DLRB A1
• Duration: 80 minutes
• Coverage: The exam will cover all the material we will have talked about until and including the lecture immediately before the exam.
• Seatings: You will be assigned a seat. I will email you the evening before the exam or the morning of the exam. Please look out for an email from me in your email account.

The format of the exam is open-book, open-notes:

• You may look at your textbook (physical copy/printed chapters), printouts of the slides and assigned readings, and written notes you've taken in class or during your own study. There is no page limit for these types of materials.
• No other source is allowed.
• No electronic device is permitted.

Note: I understand that we should be conscious of the environment, and there is quite a lot of material to print out. However, because of the size of the class, it is impossible to allow electronic devices and guarantee that no device is able to access the internet. Therefore, to ensure a fair examination among you all, I sincerely hope that you understand our rule. You can print multiple slides (say 6) on a single page, which will cut down the number of pages. If printing out the slides is challenging for you due to financial reasons, please do let me know -- I will try my best to help you with that. Thank you!!

HOW TO STUDY FOR THE EXAM:

The exam will contain a mix of multiple choice and free-text questions. The format will be similar to the review questions -- see #104 for these sample questions.

The goal of the exam is to test your understanding of the material, not memorization. Hence, you should study all the material covered in class in great detail, as I might ask in-depth questions about them. Since the exam is open-book open-notes, you should not need to remember the material -- I'd not ask a question such as what is the definition of so and so, or what is the API for a system call. (You need to understand and write code, but generally pseudo-code or simple programs like those we have as examples on the slides---we won't ask you to write programs with very complex API, as the concept is what we test in the exam, not C/C++ programming skills.) However, you really need to understand the material to complete the exam on time. For instance, for a given topic, you should ask yourself questions such as:

• What exactly is the problem we are trying to solve or the goal we want to achieve?
• How to recognize this problem/issue when it happens?
• What are the key challenges?
• What are the potential solutions? How and why do they work? How do they compare and contrast with one another (i.e., their tradeoffs)?
• Under which situation does one solution work better than another, and why?
• How can we apply or adapt a certain concept and/or technique covered in class to a particular scenario/use case in practice? If we apply a certain algorithm/protocol to a particular scenario, what would the result look like? Would there be a way simplify the algorithm if we are given certain assumptions (e.g., the network delay is bounded, or there is no network drops or out-of-order messages)
• Etc.

As you study for the exam, if you have any doubts on the concepts taught in class, please do post your questions here on Ed or visit our office hours! We will try our best to help you understand them.

---

Dear David,

Please find your score for the first midterm below.
Instructions for viewing your graded exam will be
posted on Ed Discussion soon.

Thank you,

-Linh

-----------------------------------------------------
Question 1: 8 /10
Question 2: 12 /12
Question 3: 9 /9
Question 4: 7 /12
Question 5: 7 /10
Question 6: 14 /14
Question 7: 6.5 /13
-----------------------------------------------------
Main part: 63.5 /80

Extra Credit: 5 /5
-----------------------------------------------------

TOTAL: 68.5 /80

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for having come to the exam today! You can now access your score for the first midterm exam via the following link (after logging using your PennKey):

https://alliance.seas.upenn.edu/~cis5050/midterm/index-midterm1.php

Instructions for viewing your graded exam will be announced after the spring break.

Below are the statistics on the exam for your reference. The stats show the total points (including extra credit) out of 80.

**Average: 66.95

Median: 68.95

Max: 84.5

Standard deviation: 10.45**

I hope you all have some time to rest after studying hard for the exam, and see you on Thursday!