Problem sets & past papers
I have written up some notes on how to answer questions. These notes tell you what I am looking for when I mark an answer. They also give some tips on what to do when you are confronted by an exam question.
This year's problem sets and coursework
- Exercise: who are the 99%? [pdf]
- Exercise sheet 1 (probability and calculus revision) [pdf]
- Exercise sheet 2 (working with distributions) [pdf]. See also tips on Python.
- Coursework 1 [pdf]. See Python parsing note. Model solutions on Moodle.
- Coursework 2 [pdf]. Uses cw2-runsim.py and cw2-sim.py.
- Exercise sheet 3 (job models) [pdf]
- Exercise sheet 4 (analysis tools) [pdf]
- Exercise sheet 5 (TCP) [pdf]
- Exercise sheet 6 (resource allocation) [pdf]
- Recommended exam questions: 2010/2011 questions 1,2,3,5,6,7. 2009/2010 questions 1,3,5,7. 2008/2009 questions 1,3,4.
Last year's problem sets
- sheet 1 [pdf], sheet 2 [pdf], sheet 3 [pdf], sheet 4 [pdf], sheet 5 [pdf], sheet 6 [pdf], sheet 7 [pdf],
Past exams
The syllabus changes slightly every year, and I have moved all the suitable questions into this year's problem sets. However, these exams do give you a sense of the style of question to expect.- 2010/2011 exam [pdf]
- 2010/2011 coursework 2 [pdf] and coursework 5 [pdf]
- 2009/2010 exam [pdf] with model answers [pdf]
- 2009/2010 coursework 2 [pdf] and coursework 4 [pdf]
- 2008/2009 exam [pdf] with model answer & detailed mark breakdown [pdf]
- 2008/2009 coursework 2 [pdf] with model answer/comments [pdf] and code [py/R]
- 2007/2008 exam [pdf], with model answers and detailed mark breakdown [pdf]
- 2007/2008 coursework 2 [pdf], with model answer [pdf]
- 2006/2007 half-exam [pdf], with model answers [pdf], recommend question 3
- 2006/2007 coursework 2 [pdf], with FAQ, and my comments on the submitted work
- 2005/2006 half-exam [pdf], with model answers [pdf], recommend question 5
- 2005/2006 coursework 2 [pdf], with FAQ, and my comments on the submitted work [pdf]
Before 2005/2006 I did not teach this course. For 2005/2006 and 2006/2007, I taught half the course, and the files here reflect only the half of the course that I taught. Full exam papers are available at the UCL library exam archive, though they may not reflect the current structure of the course.
Even if you can't complete a question in the exam you should still show your working; I will award marks if I can see that you've taken the right approach. When I ask you to 'explain' an equation, you should say what each of the terms represents, and give a rough argument (up to three sentences or so) about why the terms are combined in the way they are.