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SIMS 202 Information Organization and Retrieval 

Final Exam Preparation Guide, Fall 2001

(Based on Fall 2000 guide by Marti Hearst and Ray Larson)

The SIMS 202 final exam will take place Monday December 10 from 9:30am-12:30pm in 202 South Hall. This will be an open-book, open-note exam. Please bring your own pen/pencils (to be fair, and to avoid printing issues, we won't be allowing computers during the midterm. It's ok if your handwriting isn't great.). We'll supply the paper. Each person will work individually. The exam period is three hours; we expect that it will take less time than this to complete, but be prepared to work quickly.

The exam is comprehensive, meaning it will cover both parts of the class. However, the emphasis will be on materials covered since the midterm.

Each question will be worth an indicated number of points. Partial credit will be awarded. In your answers, please balance conciseness with illustration of all of the requested information. (In other words, don't write a lot of things that aren't asked for, but try to address all of what is asked for.)

To study for the exam,

These ideas and abilities should be at your fingertips. There won't be time during the exam to read up on topics you haven't studied.


Below are shown the major topics we've covered since the midterm and some example questions. Please note that these are examples of the types of questions we will ask. They are (probably) not the exact questions we will ask. Furthermore, we will probably ask some other types of questions too, in particular the kind where we give you an example of some information and ask you to do something with it (design an ER diagram, convert to a hierarchy, etc.)

You should also review the material from the first half of the class; refer to the Midterm Practice Questions for examples.