| title | Home – DSC 10 Practice |
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This site contains practice problems taken from old DSC 10 quizzes and exams. We've organized problems in a few ways:
- As discussions. Each discussion problem set contains problems about a particular topic. Come to discussions to work on these problem sets in groups, with the help of our course staff.
- As practice exams. Work through these in the weeks leading up to exams.
- As practice quizzes. Work through these to practice for quizzes.
In all cases, you should work on these problems on paper, since your quizzes and exams will also be on paper. Even though you will see some multiple choice bubbles, you intentionally cannot select them.
DSC 10's only prerequisite is high school algebra.
In order to gauge your preparedness for the type of math you'll see
in this class, you should work through these practice problems on your own. This pretest will help you identify any gaps in your background knowledge and it will teach you some useful test-taking skills.
Write your solutions on paper or a tablet, show your work, then submit to Gradescope.
The pretest will be graded based on honest effort, not on the correctness of your responses. You will earn participation credit for completing the pretest to the best of your ability.
We will later release solutions to the pretest. You are highly encouraged to check how you did and learn from the solutions.
| Discussion | Date | Topic(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monday, March 30th | Getting Started With Jupyter Notebooks |
| 2 | Monday, April 6th | Arrays and DataFrames |
| 3 | Monday, April 13th | Querying, Grouping, and Plotting |
| 4 | Monday, April 20th | Functions, DataFrames, and Control Flow |
| 5 | Monday, April 27th | Probability and Simulation |
Each exam linked here lists the conditions under which the exam was given, including the allotted amount of time and the resources allowed. For the best preparation, work through all the questions on an exam in order under these same conditions, writing down your answers on paper as you go, then check all your answers at the end. It is recommended that you prioritize the most recent exams first in your studying.
| Quarter | Instructor(s) | Exam | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2026 | Peter Chi, Sam Lau |
Midterm
Final |
Pizza in San Diego San Diego Zoo |
| Fall 2025 | Janine Tiefenbruck, Peter Chi | Midterm
Final |
English language Snow, cities |
| Spring 2025 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Tariffs, trade Hunger Games |
| Winter 2025 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Dining Halls Harry Potter |
| Fall 2024 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Halloween Bookstore, genres |
| Summer 2024 | Nishant Kheterpal | Midterm
Final |
Mario Kart Tour de France |
| Spring 2024 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Phone numbers Apartments, rent |
| Winter 2024 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Clue Olympics |
| Fall 2023 | Rod Albuyeh, Suraj Rampure, Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Cost of living Fraudulent transactions |
| Spring 2023 | Suraj Rampure | Midterm Final |
UCSD, DSC10 Sunshine in cities |
| Winter 2023 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Tropical storms Board games |
| Fall 2022 | Suraj Rampure, Puoya Tabaghi, Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Electric vehicles Board games |
| Summer 2022 | Sam Lau | Final | Dogs |
| Spring 2022 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Sun God festival IKEA |
| Winter 2022 | Suraj Rampure | Midterm
Final |
Skyscrapers WNBA |
| Fall 2021 | Suraj Rampure, Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
King Triton's flights Art musuems |
| Winter 2021 | Janine Tiefenbruck | Midterm
Final |
Below, you'll find an archive of past quizzes. Note that different quarters had a different number of quizzes, so the content of each quiz is not the same across quarters.
We've provided answers to all quiz questions, but you won't find detailed explanations. For quizzes, you should try to figure out why the answers are what they are on your own, and come to us in office hours if you're stuck. (Exam questions are harder, hence the detailed explanations.)
🆕 So you can see how your quizzes will look on paper, we've provided a PDF copy of Quiz 1 from Spring 2024, exactly as it was provided to students.
| Quarter | Instructor(s) | Quiz | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2026 | Peter Chi, Sam Lau |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 |
Course enrollment Coffee shop Playlist Evil Tutor |
| Fall 2025 | Janine Tiefenbruck, Peter Chi |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 |
Super Smash Brothers Chipotle Cats Seasons |
| Spring 2025 | Janine Tiefenbruck |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 Quiz 5 |
Minecraft Studio Ghibli Concerts Internships Polphony |
| Winter 2025 | Janine Tiefenbruck |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 Quiz 5 |
Student clubs Blue Bowl Geisel Flowers Tritonlink |
| Fall 2024 | Janine Tiefenbruck |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 |
Sea animals UC's Space reptlies Movies |
| Spring 2024 | Janine Tiefenbruck |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 Quiz 5 |
Flowers Art Restaurants Trees Bikes |
| Winter 2024 | Janine Tiefenbruck |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 Quiz 5 Quiz 6 |
Fruits Laptops Flights Oscars Weather Parking |
| Fall 2023 | Rod Albuyeh, Suraj Rampure, Janine Tiefenbruck |
Quiz 1
Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 |
Zoo Animal Crossing Costco Streaming services |