Dull exam post-mortem

[chess]

I survived this morning's Progress Test; here, have an exam post-mortem.

Section A:

Question 1: stuff I didn't know, except for the 5 mark bit on DMA

Question 2: stuff I *really* didn't know about wavelets and Fourier transforms; didn't try.

Section B:

Question 3: the convex hull problem, which I did know, except for the bit about how you find whether a point is within a given polygon, which we were never taught and the websites I found on it were of the 'look, it's simple' school of geometry (i.e. did not explain in a way I could follow despite it being GCSE maths). So a maximum of 14 marks, probably less because I had to fudge 'what do you do if the topmost point is also the leftmost when trying to eliminate points in the middle?' as I have no idea what the correct answer is.

Question 4: required drawing some vast decoding diagram which I remember seeing in the notes and running away from in terror, and my brain gliding off the impenetrable lecture concerning it. Didn't do.

Section C:

Question 5: lots of stuff about concurrency that I couldn't remember clearly enough to give a good attempt, although I did start by trying to do this question.

Question 6: A bunch of 5-mark definitions including safe ground like generics (which I just looked up everything about a day or so ago to do some coding). Still am not sure what 'pure and impure names' are, although I waffled something vaguely plausible. No idea if I said the correct things about some of the other bits. Probably 10-15 marks.

Section D:
Question 7: A nice set of unification / sequent / substitution / explanation problems, all of which I could do quite happily except the first sequent because the quantifiers didn't want to come out right. Probably 17 marks or so, unless I did something horribly wrong and didn't spot it.

Question 8: Stuff to do with resolution, which always confuses me.

Section E:

Question 9: A very straightforward question on IEEE floating point. The most awkward bit was the binary arithmatic; unfortunately I forgot how binary points worked and hence confused myself rather when converting 1.125 into
binary. I now remember and am going 'aargh, that was obvious'. So probably 18 marks.

Question 10: Something complicated from the Numerical Analysis course that I didn't even look at because IEEE floating point is so much easier than anything else on the course.

Comments

[jaq.livejournal.com]

Is a Progress Test like a Progress Quest?

[requiem-17-23.livejournal.com]

They make second-years do progress tests, now?

They didn't do it to me. I escaped, muhahaha. Or something.

[theinquisitor.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmmm. Convex hull.

I've known how to solve that for over 6 years now, and have never needed it.

(Well, there was one question which you need it to slve, that I solved - but I was *running* the competition that year, not competing).

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I wish I could still do stuff like this.

Help, I left university and now my brain has turned to cream cheese!