Final Exam

📏 Rules and Guidelines

👨‍🏫 Overview:

Your Final Exam/Project has three parts:

• Part 1. Questions on the content of the course. (40 points; 20 shortish problems worth 2 points each)
• Part 2. Problems using skills from the course. (40 points; 5 longish problems worth 8 points each)
• Part 3. Discussion of the exam and the course material. (20 points; +/- 10 points for discussion of Parts 1 and 2, respectively; 20 points for discussion of course content questions.) You can book a time for your oral exam here

You must submit your Jupyter notebooks for Part 1 and Part 2 at least 48 hours prior to your appointment for Part 3. You will be given your grade on Part 1 and Part 2 before the oral exam, so that you know what your status is. *For late submission of Part 1 and/or Part 2, I will deduct 2 points per hour. However, to encourage people to choose earlier time slots, no one needs to turn in the exam before 11am (Toronto time) on Wednesday, April 28. (I hope everyone can submit by then.)

📖 Rules for “Open Book” Exam: The exam is open notes and open library. It is “open internet search” but you (obviously!) can’t post questions on an internet discussion board or homework/problem/exam help site. You are not allowed to communicate with your classmates or any other human being (except me) about these questions or your responses, and this includes human beings (singular or plural, known or anonymous) online.

Part 1 (40 points; Jupyter)

Part 1 of the exam has 20 questions (2 points each) and 2 bonus questions (2 points each). You must submit it by 11am Wednesday, April 29 or at least 48 hours prior to your oral defense/exam, whichever is later.

You can find Part 1 of the exam online, at syzygy, or on binder. If you look on binder, look for the file ipynb/Final Exam Part 1.ipynb. If you are having trouble with the McMaster syzygy link, try this.

Note: Turn in your Jupyter notebook for part 1 on MSTeams. For information on how to turn in an assignment with Microsoft Teams, see the webpage.

Part 2 (40 points; Jupyter)

Part 2 of the exam is a Jupyter notebook that you need to read, understand, answer questions about, and extend. It has 5 questions (8 points each) and one bonus (8 points). You must submit it by 11am Wednesday, April 29 or at least 48 hours prior to your oral defense/exam, whichever is later.

You can find Part 2 of the exam online, at syzygy, or on binder. If you look on binder, look for the file ipynb/Final Exam Part 2.ipynb. If you are having trouble with the McMaster syzygy link, try this.

Note: Turn in your Jupyter notebook for part 2 on MSTeams. For information on how to turn in an assignment with Microsoft Teams, see the webpage.

Part 3 (20 points; oral)

Part 3. (There is a version as a Jupyter notebook if you would like to tale notes on the document directly. The oral exam will take about 30 minutes.

• Book an appointment online.
• The meeting will be hosted in the Office Hours channel of MSTeams; the exam will be recorded.

Part 3 of the exam has three parts.

• I will ask you questions about your responses in Part 1. I will score this as “plus” “minus” or “neutral”, and adjust your grade on Part 1 up or down at most 10 points based on this portion of the exam.
• I will ask you questions about your responses in Part 2. I will score this as “plus” “minus” or “neutral”, and adjust your grade on Part 2 up or down at most 10 points based on this portion of the exam.
• For each of the 4 question groupings listed in the notebook, I will pick one question at random. Each of these questions is worth up to 5 points. You can find an html version of the notebook here.

Book a time for your oral exam here. The oral exam will happen in the Office Hours Channel of MSTeams, at the link. The oral exam will be recorded, and proctored by the course’s teaching assistant.

Problems?

Sometimes the above links for syzygy and/or binder may fail because you have existing files in your directory that conflict with the files that are being downloaded and nbgitpuller can’t figure out how to merge the disparate copies. In this case, possible solutions are:

1. Use a “private” or “incognito” window in your browser to open the link. Often this is enough to make things work….
2. You can directly download the file to the default location on your computer for downloaded files. You can also download the Jupyter notebooks directly from GitHub. Select the file you want, right-click on the “raw” button, and select “Save As” to download the file. Finally, after the file is downloaded, you can then open this file using mcmaster.syzygy.ca or pims.syzygy.ca, or any other (e.g., local) installation of Jupyter.
3. Manually pull in the file you want directly from [Github(https://github.com/PaulWAyers/IntroQChemProblems) There are instructions about how to do this on the syzygy web site.
4. Keep a directory with the “raw” files I post online, and then a “working” directory with the files you use. Here are links for automatically downloading files for Part 1 and Part 2 into a reference directory.