Exam Review Lecture

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Exam Review Lecture
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Feedback

• Use of Ada as initial language
• Intro to Ada via the unsupervised labs
• C for second assignment prefer Ada or perhaps
  Java?
• Relation of labs to lectures
• Text book did you buy was it useful?

• Assignments too easy too hard
• Mid-semester exam good or bad idea?
• Split between Alistair and Peter
• Did you consider dropping out why, why did you
  persevere
• Did you learn anything!
• Advise friends to take course

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The Long and Very Hard Exam!

• 915am, Thursday 1st November 2007 in Melville
  Hall (I believe)
• Double check time and location
• 15min reading time
• Permitted material
• Dictionary with departmental approval
• Non-Programmable Calculator (but wont help you!)
• Same format as last year (write in boxes)
• No optional questions

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Final Mark

• Examination worth 50 or 60 of your final mark
• 50 if you did better in the mid-semester
  compared to the end of semester
• 60 if you do better in this exam compared to the
  mid-semester
• (Arent we kind!)
• Sum of assignments 1 and 2 worth 40 of your
  final course mark
• There is no minimum mark requirement for any part
  of COMP2310
• Final course mark may be scaled, but this will be
  done without bias
• Please read assessment scheme on comp2310 web
  page
• Assignment 2 may not be marked before the exam

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Exam Question Philosophy

• Objective of the exam is to differentiate you
  according to your level of understanding of the
  course
• 30 fairly easy information recall
• 50 will require some thought
• 20 hard requiring deep understanding of material
  and ability to apply to new situations

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Categories Blooms Taxonomy

• Knowledge Recognizes students ability to use
  rote memorization and recall certain facts.
• Name the four major food groups.
• Comprehension Involves students ability to read
  course content, understand and interpret
  important information and put others ideas into
  their own words.
• Using grammatically correct English, please
  explain the main events that lead to the creation
  of the four major food groups?
• Application Students take new concepts and apply
  them to another situation.
• Solve for the ten following fraction
  multiplication problems. Please make sure to show
  all your work.
• Analysis Students have the ability to take new
  information and break it down into parts to
  differentiate between them.
• From the short presidential debate transcribed
  below Differentiate the passages that attacked a
  political opponent personally, and those that
  attacked an opponents political programs.
• Synthesis Students are able to take various
  pieces of information and form a whole creating a
  pattern where one did not previously exist.
• Develop one plausible ending for all three short
  stories below.
• Evaluation Involves students ability to look
  at someone elses ideas or principles and see the
  worth of the work and the value of the
  conclusions.
• Using the basic principles of socialism
  discussed in this course, evaluate the US
  economic system by providing key arguments to
  support your judgment.

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Exam Question Breakdown (AR)

• General concurrency and its Support(8/100)
• What is, use of, process, thread, program states,
  multiprogramming/tasking/processor
• Mutual Exclusion and Synchronization (18/100)
• mutual exclusion, semaphore, monitor, condition
  variables
• Message Passing (10/100)
• use, synch/asynch, buffering, synchronization
  via, ordering
• Non-Determinism (10/100)
• Expect the unexpected!

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Exam Question Breakdown (PS)

• Scheduling (6/100)
• purpose, classification and evaluation of
• Safety and Liveness (14/100)
• meaning, fairness, deadlock conditions for,
  prevention, avoidance, recover, atomic operation,
  idempotent
• Architectures (13/100)
• C/Ada etc and OS issues
• Distributed systems (21/100)
• Networks, time, synchronization, transactions

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Warning

• Watch the time you devote to each question.
  Particularly questions that require code
  analysis. One (hard) question carries an explicit
  warning!

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Questions and Contact

• Use phorum
• potentially 80 people can help you
• Alistair Rendell
• available if in office, or phone/email to check
  that I am around
• Peter Strazdins (busy marking very grumpy!)
• Office hours, email
• Check COMP2310 web site
• Will note assignment mark release on web site and
  on phorum
• Good Luck