cs2040 midterms

[u/AdditionSensitive583]

anyone else feels absolutely cooked by this mod… even some of the mcqs are so tricky and the time constraint is insane… even some of my smart friends couldn’t finish it. how much do u need to score to get b+/a- for this mod?

[u/Bosaida]

which question(s) do you think is the hardest/trickiest in your opinion?

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/Bosaida]

issue is mostly time constraint tbh, i fked up and wrote the wrong algo for the last qn but on hindsight it was doable. however, the true/false questions are quite difficult compared to past years and i spent sm time on them but got one wrong. i also got multiple mcqs wrong too so uhh… cooked

[u/Genotabby → u/AdditionSensitive583]

What time complexity do you think the paper is

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/Genotabby]

O(n!) for me cuz i have skill issue but prolly O(n) for the cs sweats

[u/Imaginary-Cellist918 → u/AdditionSensitive583]

The CS sweats should join the CS tryharders in CS2040S already. It's too bad it's only restricted to CS, but the new DS major students can go write that one alr

[u/ladiesman292]

Took this around 6 years ago. But how are the questions and assignments of this module now? What topics are covered?

[u/Imaginary-Cellist918 → u/ladiesman292]

For the midterms or in general?

It's roughly similar in overall scope to CS2040S, which has its own website under Dr Steven Halim. For the midterm, the scope was asymptotic analysis of algos, essential sorting algos, arrays (resizable vs. linked lists), stacks, queues, deques, then the priority queue ADT with binary heaps, then the table ADT with hash tables

I'm currently taking the course but with what I've heard and observed, the rest of the course there should also be things like UFDS, BST/AVL trees, graph DS (adjacency matrix/list, etc.) and graph problems (DFS, BFS, CS, SSSP - Bellman-Ford, unweighted and weighted graphs, on trees, on DAG), MST (Kruskal and Prim)

[u/ladiesman292 → u/Imaginary-Cellist918]

Overall. So they still have visualgo and stuff like that? How are assignments though? Especially with GenAI and stuff like that. Back then assignments took a huge chunk of our time. Now I imagine they’re solved around the same day they’re released?

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/ladiesman292]

yepp they have visualgo and we have 2 visualgo quizzes which takes place in the lab but they’re in the 2nd half of the sem so we haven’t done it yet

[u/Imaginary-Cellist918 → u/ladiesman292]

Yes, VisuAlgo still exists and Dr Halim who made it teaches CS2040S, but CS2040 also uses it.

Gen AI. Huh. I mean there are mainly two kinds of assignments in the non-S version, it's In-Lab Assignments for which the pseudocode must be submitted in-lab (labs are Fridays weekly) and Java must be submitted by the following Monday. There are also larger assignments which supposedly are harder problems. Inherently, yeah, I would say many people might make their way through quite easily on these things with GenAI. I think the S version is trying to implement Gen AI-based questions in their exams and tutorials, if you check out Dr Halim's website and recent midterm papers.

However, comes with the tradeoff that they would struggle in the exams which cost significantly more in the grade [73% for CS2040]

[u/ladiesman292 → u/Imaginary-Cellist918]

Yup, in CS2040S, the exams are usually the hardest part. You can barely finish, but then the median score is usually around only 60% if that is any consolation. As long as you’re sure you’ve got half the questions correct, you can expect atleast a B+.

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/ladiesman292]

for 2040 midterms the median is usu around 40+% 😭😭

[u/ladiesman292 → u/AdditionSensitive583]

Yup. That also means it was a harder than average paper this time.

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/ladiesman292]

i don’t think our midterms r that much harder than average? cuz on average it’s already very hard 😭😭 it’s just the time constraint and stress getting to me

[u/ladiesman292 → u/AdditionSensitive583]

Yeah I mean it’s one of the hardest mods you can take along with CS3230(the algo design one). Also, time constraints are a given. They don’t expect you to finish the paper tbh.

[u/Imaginary-Cellist918 → u/ladiesman292]

It's the same in CS2040 too. The two mods are actually not very different, though because S is taken by the CS students, it's much more essential and needs much more LeetCode grind supplementing it [since interview prep]. Non-S CS2040 is taken by biz analytics, data sci and other CS 2MJ/MIN people, and a lot of these people don't do CS1231S (or equivalent) prior or CS2030/S

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/Imaginary-Cellist918]

this sems midterm true/false qn had like “an ai suggested these 2 solution” in the phrasing lol

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/ladiesman292]

i think the topics covered are around the same, but they reduced the number of take home assignments and added more assesments like a written assessment before midterm (suspect its cuz of chatgpt being able to do assignments lol).

the question difficulty is q high, around leetcode medium, but they alw make it so much more lengthy than actual leetcode qns. and u need to rly know how to apply what uve learnt + need to apply common techniques like 2pointer even if they arent explicitly taught in lectures

[u/ladiesman292 → u/AdditionSensitive583]

I see, that makes sense. If they only had take home assignments, then that’s basically 20% guaranteed for almost anyone that cares to do the assignments.

[u/Imaginary-Cellist918 → u/AdditionSensitive583]

Lectures do not cover two pointers, slow and fast pointers, sliding windows, monotonic stacks, and I don't think greedy algos are taught either - though there's a high chance you'll be tested on these in the exams. The lectures are only for theory, vastly removed from actual LeetCode relevant DSA abilities. It's one of those mods where the mantra of watching all lectures and doing all tutorial and lab problems does not suffice.

[u/AdditionSensitive583 → u/Imaginary-Cellist918]

whats greedy algo 💀 see thats why im cooked