Test 1 information, CSC 104, Winter 2012

Test #1 begins at 9:10 AM on Friday February 17th.

The test is not in your tutorial room. It is in room 100 of the "EX" building, 255 McCaul Street. [map]

There is assigned seating. You are assigned to a room and to a seat in that room. Please look up your seat assignment in advance in my "netgrade" system.
Be on time or lose minutes! It will take you a few minutes to get seated; if you walk through the door at 9:10, you're late.

Please BRING YOUR STUDENT PHOTO ID CARD. Please put it face up on your desk so that we can check them quickly.

The test potentially covers everything in the lab handouts, assignment 1, and most of the material in lectures through February 7 inclusive:

• problem-solving and algorithmic machines; properties of an "algorithm"
  • (No rote memorization, such as memorizing Polya's problem-solving phases, details of problems examined, Brookshear's definition of what constitutes an "algorithm", ASCII character values, etc. Any such material you need for the test will be provided on the test; but you do need to be able to understand it if it is provided.)
• hardware versus software; parts of a computer
• secondary storage (files on disk); hierarchical filesystems; absolute and relative path names
• Basic principles and use of modern graphical user interfaces.
• Data communications, the internet, IP addresses, port numbers, URLs in the world-wide web
• Basic numeric expressions
• Computer programming: simple sequences of assignment statements and 'print' statements in Python.

See the course topics list for some notes, and Brookshear chapter/section references. Of course you can find a lot more information about all of this out there on the web. I hesitate to cite Wikipedia pages because they can be changed at any time by anyone, but usually Wikipedia is quite good.

Most of all, though, to prepare for the test you should do stuff, as much as or more than reading stuff. Go through the lab handouts, assignment one, assignment two. You have to do assignment two anyways, so you might as well start it now so that it doubles as test preparation!

Obviously a 45-minute test can't be comprehensive over this range of material -- this is a list of what is potentially covered by the test.

The test is written on paper; there are no computers in the test room.

No aids are allowed (no calculators either). However, you should not have to memorize any tables of stuff. If you're not clear on whether or not you have to memorize something, ask in e-mail. For the final exam, my usual answer will be "if you asked me that question during the exam, I would tell you the answer"; unfortunately the tests have to be during class time so time is rather short, but the same policy applies, it just may not be possible to enact depending on how many student questions there are.

Please remember to BRING YOUR STUDENT PHOTO ID CARD and place it face up on your desk. It would be best if you could avoid bringing any papers and books, if convenient, since you won't be able to keep them where you can see them, because all aids are prohibited. Mobile phones and pagers are also prohibited (because, obviously, you're not allowed to communicate with others during the test).

Here is a sample test #1.

Remember that there are ongoing TA lab hours in a CDF lab room.

You don't have to know the following for test one (we'll test it later):

• String expressions.
• Computer programming involving input(), raw_input(), 'if' statements, 'for' loops, 'while' loops.
• Spreadsheets

If you miss the test for medical reasons, I need documentation. The accommodation, in the case of acceptable documentation, will be to make the final exam grade count for your test grade too, with a suitable adjustment if applicable (if the final exam average is significantly lower than the test average, which might be true in the case of test #1).