So, who took the common final? I'll tell you this much: our instructor didn't cover enough material to pass the final. And if you don't pass the final you don't pass the class. A friend and I complained to the head of the department, we'll see what happens.

If you were also boned by this final, complain to kte@mst.edu. That's Kelvin Erickson, the head of the dept.

The final wasn't rape. Rape has to be a somewhat fair fight.

Since when has cpe 111 had a common final? and who's your teacher?

This was the first semester. My instructor was Carl Larsen, a TA.

Just curious what material wasn't covered. When I took cpe 111, we definitely blew threw the last chapter or so of material. Pretty sure I only did well on the question over that was because I memorized an example and just wrote that down.

I took the final Monday because of a scheduling conflict with Diff Eq, it was pretty bad. The last problem was 20% of the test and it was huge. I think the only reason I did as well as I did on the test (which I think I did reasonably) is because I have some experience with digital design and stuff from high school vo-tech classes.

I had Ryan Meuth and I don't think he prepared us for the final well, granted I stopped paying attention in the class mid way through the 1st month, but still. We had two tests... the midterm and the final. The only, ONLY reason I had a clue was to do for most of the test was the fact that a friend of mine had a file from when there were 3 exams in the course.

Although someone told me today that noone in my class today finished it, so my instructor is going to curve it... yay

Dang, cpe111 with Larsen was the first college class that I ended the semester with over a 100%

When I took 111 with Larsen in Fall '07, the final was just the last test. He told us that he switches between a cumulative final and just having a last test, but if it's a common final then I guess that was thrown out. Hearing the experiences of friends taking 111 leads me to believe Larsen simply doesn't cover things (IEEE standard floating point, Hamming code). Maybe he covered those this semester, but back when I took it I didn't learn this at all, and never saw it on a test.

Hopefully the complaints can help, the final sounds great (cumulative and with a horrible final question? Nice.)

I had Meuth as well and I think he prepared us fine. Yeah, I didn't like having only one test between the semester's start and the final, but he covered all the material well enough. Everything that was on the test, he covered in class multiple times, between the lectures, homework questions, and review. I actually fault the class's grader for being extremely lazy and inconsistent; that's what screwed me up the most when studying for the test.

Also, I think Meuth said because a lot of people couldn't do a few of the problems, he would consider curving. Though, I left the room about two minutes before he said that, so I could be mistaken.

All that aside, it was a difficult test, and I was working for most of the two hours just to answer the questions, never mind looking back over it.

If the final was with Larsen it would be fine. His tests were easy. But, like I told the department chair, the tests and homework did little to prepare us for the common final. Several questions on the final looked nothing like we'd ever done before. About 1/4 of the final was over things we had not even discussed in class, and Carl's solution to non-covered material was for us to "look it over" which, for a non-CompE like myself, didn't help.

Carl told us that if we did well on his tests that we should be fine, well, I feel like I got fisted with a chainsaw. lol.

I had Al-Assadi. Horrible teacher IMHO; easily confuses himself on the board and/or makes mistakes that we try to correct him on, though the corrections are more like a debate.

I still swear (and one other person who took it with me confirmed this) that one of the problems was logically impossible. Essentially, it had to do with an 8-bit full adder with carry-ins and -outs where we had to fill in missing information, and what he had given was logically impossible.

Anyway, other than that, I felt surprisingly well-prepared for the final. There were no surprises; he had actually told us exactly what to study for the final and he felt that it was "very very easy."

Yeah, I imagine if you were taught all that it would be...

Yeah the 8 bit full adder was wrong I think.. Everything worked for me when I started at the LSB and worked my way to the MSB.. except the carry out bit was supposed to be 0 and my numbers made it 1 no matter what. oh well.

I also had Meuth as teacher. Like BDH said here, he did cover all of the stuff multiple times, but each time he did it a little differently, pointing out mistakes he'd done in the previous examples. He also didn't work most of the larger problems (like the 20% of the final exam problem) to completion. He'd stop about 3 steps from the end or only show half of the work and say "and then you just do this for the other types of flip flops, even though this is just a D-Type, you should be able to figure out how it works for JK and SR." And yeah, the grader sucked badly, whoever that is should not be allowed to grade things ever.

And yeah, as we were leaving he said almost exactly, when someone asked "Are you going to curve the test?" "There are a few questions on there that it seems almost no one got right, so I probably will." Which gives me hope to get a C on the exam. I had an 89.2% in the class going into the final and I only needed a 60% on the final to keep my B, but we still needed that 70% on it to pass the class.

I wouldn't have minded that if the exam had not have been so friggin long and unpracticed for. Having had only one exam the semester (the midterm) and some homework assignments was retarded. I can't believe I'm saying it, but more exams please. Maybe just one more or two at most and it would have worked out a lot better, I think.

Larsen's class had a similar problem. Our two tests and homework were too easy. Multiple people said they learned more from the lab (which I didn't take, yay math major) than from the class. Then we sat for the final and were slightly blown away. The first half (conversions / kmaps / playing with functions) was alright - we'd done it before. Then afterwards with the flipflops, state machines, and all that, it got hairy.

These things happen, lol. But I don't want to fail the class, tis why I bitch as I do.

That means the curve was at least 22 percent in my section. How ridiculous is that?