CSC151.02 2014S, Class 17: Exam 1 Discussion
Overview
- Preliminaries.
- General issues.
- Exam strategies.
- Additional Q&A.
Preliminaries
Admin
- A remote hello to my grad school colleague Frank Corley. Will he find this
message when he next Googles his name?
- Frank: Thanks for sending good kids to Grinnell.
- Reading for Tuesday: Boolean Values and Predicate Procedures
- Exam 1 returned. It will be the topic of today's class.
- Yes, I've been known to screw up on grading. Let me know if you have
questions.
- Yes, my handwriting is awful, particularly after I've graded the first
dozen exams. Let me know when you can't read it.
- I've distributed some notes on exam 1 via email.
Please read them before you talk to me about the exam.
- Please visit with me if you invoked "there's more to life".
- I do not report statistics on exams.
- I expect that there are some questions about the homework, and have reserved
time for those questions.
- Extra credit:
- Study Break tonight at 8pm
- Improv show Saturday
- Thursday extra: Technical interviews
Questions on the Homework
How do I get the image-transform problem to work?
image-variant needs a one-parameter procedure. You have a two-parameter procedure.
You will probably need an anonymous procedure to fill in the second parameter.
(define myproc
(lambda (color some-other-parameter-probably-named-gamma)
...))
(image-variant image (lambda (color) (myproc color some-other-value)))
What is an anonymous procedure?
A procedure with no name. It typically has the form (lambda (val) ...).
How do we take lists as input?
The same way you take any value as input.
(define myfun
(lambda (lst)
...))
Suppose I have a procedure that I've taken as input and I want to apply it
to a value, how do I do so?
(proc value)
Sam, that wasn't very helpful. Can you be a bit more detailed.
Well ... part of the goal of the problem is that you figure this out. But an
anonymous procedure that takes your procedure as input would help
(lambda (proc) (proc ...))
Apply some procedure to 1, 2, and 3 and make a list of the result
(map (lambda (proc) (list (proc 1) (proc 2) (proc 3)))
(list square increment))
General issues
- No exam statistics!
- A bad approach to the exam? Don't banga
- It's a lot easier to know if a procedure seems to be correct than if
documentation or a test seem to be sufficient.
- Limited vision is insufficient
Exam strategies
Our approach:
- Individually, make a list of 3 "Do"s or "Don't"s.
- Share with a group of four (or so).
- Share with class.
Do:
- Regularly send yourself a copy of the exam so that when DrRacket crashes
you haven't lost everything.
- Maybe reate a separate .rkt file for every problem.
- Long-term: Learn how to use git to preserve all versions of your files.
- Review your work during work time, so that you understand it when you hit
the exam.
- Constantly run experiments to make sure that your code works.
- Or write unit tests in advance.
- Read through your work a few times, particularly documentation.
- Compare your work to the provided examples.
- Start early, maybe as soon as Sam posts the test.
- Lets you see what the test includes.
- Might let you pace yourself.
- Your subconscious is sometimes a very good problem solver.
- And we sometimes have related problems on labs and quizzes.
- Work on a problem for a little while and then move on to the next one
if you haven't solved it.
- Take a lot of breaks.
- Pay attention to subtle phrasing.
- Challenge Sam when his instructions are unclear.
- Read the error messages. They do give you some hint as to what's wrong.
- You do better on your work if you have proper nutrition.
- Use the various paper resources
- Your homework
- Your labs
- The readings and labs
- Maybe the eboards
Don't:
- Spend too much time on one problem.
- Try to solve every problem "all at once".
- Try to solve the test in one sitting.
- Miss anything in the instructions.
- Turn your test in too early.
- Start too early. Let the gunners find the bugs in the exam.
Additional Q&A
