The test is closed book and closed notes. This is because I want you to understand the material beforehand. I expect you to know certain definitions cold including DFA, NFA, PDA, CFG, TM, recursive, r.e., co-r.e.

I will put a crib sheet on the last page of the exam containing some information that you should know but don't need to memorize. Here is a draft of the crib sheet that will be the last page of the exam. Please send me suggestions by Monday, March 2 at the latest if there is other information that you would like to have on the Crib Sheet.

To study for the test, I urge you to do the following:

1. Go over the four homeworks, and their model solutions, making sure that you now understand all of these.

2. Go over your notes for Lectures 1 through 17 and the associated readings from the text, i.e., Chapters 0 through 5.

3. Trying all the exercises and problems from Sipser Chapters 1 through 5, can be useful if you have the time. Also, Professor Barrington has posted his exams for when he taught 501. My exams will have different format, but you could try one or two of his exams to get a feel for how you understand the material. Note that he gave two midterms, so his first midterm doesn't cover TM's and his second midterm covers some complexity that we haven't done yet. See https://people.cs.umass.edu/~barring/cs501s15/exams/.

4. Relax and get a good night's sleep on Wednesday night.

I try hard to make my exams like my problem sets only simpler because they are closed book and there is a time limit. My hope is that two hours will be more than enough for most of you to comfortably finish this exam. Do not feel obliged to stay the full two hours: once you have checked your solutions carefully, please feel free to quietly hand in your exam and leave.