Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECE 313 Late-Breaking News

Final Examination: The Final Examination is scheduled for Monday December 13, 1999 from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in Rooms 218 and 243, Mechanical Engineering Building. Students with last names beginning with the letters A-K should go to Room 218; students with last names beginning with the letters L-Z should go to Room 243.

The Conflict Exam is scheduled for the same evening from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in Room 168 Everitt Laboratory. You may not take the conflict exam unless you actually have a conflict at the regularly scheduled exam time and have informed your instructor about the existence of the conflict in a timely fashion.

  • You are allowed to bring TWO 8.5" by 11" sheets of notes to the exam; both sides of the sheets can be used.

    Calculators, laptop computers, Palm Pilots and the like are not permitted.

  • You are expected to know what is meant by

    • a Bernoulli random variable with parameter p

    • a binomial random variable with parameters (n,p)

    • a geometric random variable with parameter p

    • a Poisson random variable with parameter (lambda)

    • a random variable uniformly distributed on (a,b)

    • an exponential random variable with parameter (lambda)

    • a Gaussian random variable with mean (mu) and variance (sigma)2

    • a bivariate random variable (X,Y) uniformly distributed on a region of the plane
    and
    • jointly Gaussian random variables with means (mu)x and (mu)y respectively, variances (sigmax)2 and (sigmay)2 respectively, and correlation coefficient (rho)

    If you have forgotten the formulas for the pmf/pdf/CDF or the mean and variance of these (or do not have them written down on your sheets of notes,) you will not be given these pieces of information during the exam.

    A table of values of the unit Gaussian CDF will be supplied to you if it is needed on the exam.

The Final Examination is comprehensive in that much of the subject matter covered in the entire course is included on the exam. However, there is considerably more emphasis on the material not covered on the two Hour Exams, and the material covered after the Second Hour Exam. It is recommended that you pay particular attention to topics such as

  • univariate CDFs, pdfs and pmfs

  • computation of the probability that X lies in an interval

  • mean, variance, and LOTUS (Proposition 2.1 on p. 197)

  • computation of the pdf/pmf of a function of one random variable

  • joint pdfs and pmfs

  • computation of marginal pdfs and pmfs

  • computation of the probability that (X,Y) lies in a region of the plane

  • computation of the pdf/pmf of a function of two random variables

  • covariance, correlation coefficient, variance of a sum of random variables, covariance of aX+bY and cX+dY, etc.

  • jointly Gaussian random variables

  • Markov and Chebyshev inequalities, Weak Law of Large Numbers, and the Central Limit Theorem and their applications in bounding and estimating probabilities

Those who feel that they understand the concepts perfectly but have difficulty solving the problems will have a chance to demonstrate their grasp of facts via TRUE/FALSE and multiple-choice problems. However, guessing on these problems will be penalized severely.

Because of a lack of space, the Final Exam does not include any questions on the following topics: maximum-likelihood estimation, hypothesis testing and statistical decision-making, minimum mean-square error estimation, and hazard rates.