The final exam will be essentially "cumulative".  It will cover all the material in the course except the graphical solution method for linear programs (class 3, September 9) and discrete-event simulation (class 27, April 27). 

Regarding the exam format:

• There will 5 or 6 questions (if there are 6, the average length/difficulty of the questions will be reduced)
• At least two questions will be algebra formulations of optimization models
• At least one question will be on spreadsheet formulation of optimization problems, including integer variables
• At least one question will be about spreadsheet simulation with a single time period
• At least one of the questions will be about spreadsheet simulation with multiple time periods.

The exam rules will be similar to the midterms, except that you are allowed two double-sided sheets of notes, still in your own handwriting only.  As before, you are allowed a calculator, although one should not be necessary. 

The following material should be helpful in studying for the exam:

• All examples covered in class, except discrete event simulation and the graphical method for linear programming.  Note that complete lecture notes are available on Sakai
• All the final exam practice questions in the coursepack, starting on page 294, with full solutions starting on page 332
• All midterm practice questions on pages 236-291 of the coursepack, especially the midterm 2 practice questions that were skipped in the midterm 2 study guide, namely: staffing a class schedule, page 262; producing trucks, page 264; Safe-T-Flow, page 266; shipping explosives, page 267; online auction with group bids, page 269; configuring intranet servers, page 270; planning an advertising campaign, page 273, staffing an office, page 281
• All homework assignments and their solutions posted on Sakai, except the graphical solution method (homework 2)
• Both midterm exams and the distributed solutions (also on Sakai).

The general format of the exam questions will be roughly similar to the final exam practice questions in the coursepack.  You will note that some of the final exam practice questions on linear and integer programming combine elements that we studied in different parts of the course.  For example, there might be a model with both blending (proportionality) constraints and binary variables.  The same thing could happen on some of the actual final exam questions.

All sections of the course will take the same exam at the same time.  The exam will be reviewed by all instructors to make sure it is appropriate for all the sections.  All instructors will grade the exam jointly.