Day 9 — Papers 02 & 03
Plan
Date: Wed Sep 16, 2026 · Mode: timed, closed book, no venv
Papers: paper-02.md (code-output heavy) · paper-03.md (transpile / execution modes / mitigation)
Days 1–8 taught the material. From here to the exam nothing new is taught — every remaining day converts knowledge you already have into marks under time pressure. Paper 01 was Day 8's evening rep, so today is the first day that is only papers.
Both of today's papers are half-length: 34 questions, 45 minutes, pass mark 24.
Timing
| Block | Time | What |
|---|---|---|
| Morning review | 15 min | Redo the questions you missed on Paper 01 |
| Paper 02 | 45 min | Strict timer. Answers on paper. Phone away. |
| Grade 02 | 45 min | paper-02-answers.md. One line per miss, in your own words. |
| Break | 60 min | Away from the desk. Do not read Qiskit docs. |
| Paper 03 | 45 min | Strict timer, same conditions |
| Grade 03 | 45 min | paper-03-answers.md |
| Debrief | 15 min | Fill in debrief.md |
What each paper is testing
Paper 02 — code-output heavy. Most questions are "what does this print."
The failure mode is arithmetic-by-eyeball: you recognise the API, assume the
output, and skip the bit-ordering. Read every register index. Little-endian
applies to counts keys, SparsePauliOp labels, and apply_layout alike.
Paper 03 — transpilation, execution modes, mitigation. Three topics that
each have a decision table rather than a fact to recall: optimization levels
0–3, job vs batch vs session, and suppression vs mitigation (dynamical
decoupling and twirling suppress; ZNE, TREX and PEC mitigate; resilience_level
is Estimator-only). If you are guessing here, the fix is the table in
final-review-cheatsheet.md, not more papers.
Protocol
Closed book means closed book — no venv, no docs, no cheatsheet, no going back after the timer. Mark the questions you were unsure of even when you got them right; a lucky guess is a miss that has not happened yet.
Grade immediately while the reasoning is still in your head. For every wrong answer, read the explanation and write one line saying why your answer looked right. That line is the thing that stops the repeat.
Targets
- ≥24/34 (70%) on both papers. This is the trend's starting point, not its ceiling — Day 10 targets 25, Day 12 targets 27.
- Red flag: below 20/34 on either paper. If that happens, Day 10 morning becomes a question-bank redo of the weakest section instead of Paper 04. Losing a paper is cheaper than carrying the gap into the full-length reps.
- Any single section below half marks goes straight onto the Day 11 list.