💪 Practice Problems

DSC 10 at UC San Diego

This site contains practice problems taken from old DSC 10 quizzes and exams. We’ve organized problems in a few ways:

1. 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.
2. As practice exams. Work through these in the weeks leading up to exams.
3. 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.

🧮 Pretest

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.

This pretest is due Thursday, October 2nd at 11:59PM. 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 release solutions to the pretest at the beginning of Week 2. You are highly encouraged to check how you did and learn from the solutions.

💯 Discussions for Fall 2025

📝 Exams

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.

🙋‍♀️ Quizzes

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.

🔎 Find Problems by Lecture

Jump to a page that collects all questions tagged for a given lecture.

👋 Feedback: Find an error? Still confused? Have a suggestion? Let us know here.