{"id":1038,"date":"2026-05-02T10:54:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T14:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/?p=1038"},"modified":"2026-05-02T10:54:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T14:54:37","slug":"hardest-final-exam-question-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/?p=1038","title":{"rendered":"Hardest final exam question in history"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">\n.hb {font-size:large;font-weight:bold;color:#DAA520;}\nblockquote {\n  position: relative;  \/* Enables absolute positioning for ::before *\/\n  margin: 1em 0;       \/* Vertical spacing *\/\n  padding-left: 2.5em; \/* Indents text (adjust as needed) *\/\n  background: #f9f9f9; \/* Optional: subtle background *\/\n}<\/p>\n<p>blockquote::before {\n  content: '';\n  position: absolute;\n  left: 0;             \/* Flush with parent's left edge *\/\n  top: 0;\n  bottom: 0;           \/* Full height *\/\n  width: 8px;          \/* Heavy bar width *\/\n  background: #333;    \/* Solid bar (or use border-left: 8px solid #333; width: 0; ) *\/\n}\n<\/style>\n<p>For the fifth consecutive year running, the hardest question on the final exam <i>by far<\/i> was question 6:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<i>&#8220;A table called Z has attributes A, B, and C. The following functional dependency exists in this table: {C} &rarr; {A}. What is Z&#8217;s key, and is it normalized?&#8221;<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The correct answer &mdash; which I hope will become apparent to you moments after thinking about it &mdash; is:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The key is {B, C}.<\/li>\n<li>No, it is not normalized, because A depends on only part of the key, not the whole key.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Only <u><i>three<\/i><\/u> students (out of 33) got this question correct (Go Amy! Props Eraj! Kudos Rachelle!). Everyone else said that {C} was the key, which of course can&#8217;t be correct if C doesn&#8217;t functionally determine all the attributes.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>At any rate, the exams have been graded and posted and the scoreboard is now <b>final<\/b>. Props to such a great effort this semester, and especially to our many &#8220;Half-Baked&#8221; recipes, including: <span class=hb>Toudou<\/span>, <span class=hb>Evenstar<\/span>, <span class=hb>Hoid<\/span>, <span class=hb>CtrlAltDelete<\/span>, <span class=hb>Gerry<\/span>, <span class=hb>grok<\/span>, <span class=hb>robin<\/span>, <span class=hb>GoBananza<\/span>, and <span class=hb>meh<\/span>. You guys are all amazing and it has been truly a privilege to teach you!<\/p>\n<div style=\"width=800px;text-align:center;\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"halfbaked.jpg\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the fifth consecutive year running, the hardest question on the final exam by far was question 6: &#8220;A table called Z has attributes A, B, and C. The following functional dependency exists in this table: {C} &rarr; {A}. What is Z&#8217;s key, and is it normalized?&#8221; The correct answer &mdash; which I hope will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1045,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions\/1045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/cpsc350\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}