Study-Aids
1 About Exams
In general, exams will contain three kinds of questions:
short answer (e.g., true-false, multiple choice, matching,
fill in the blank), code tracing (i.e., you are given a code fragment
and asked to trace its execution), and programming (i.e., you are asked
to design and/or write code to accomplish a particular task).
2 Studying for Exams
There is no single best source of information. You should review
all of the following.
- Homework Assignments
- Projects
- Readings
- Lectures
- Labs
- Sample Exam Questions (see below)
Questions can and will be taken from all of these materials.
3 Sample Exam Questions
Sample questions are available for the following exams.
These are sample questions, not sample exams (i.e., they are not
indicative of the length of the actual exams or the mix of questions
that will appear on the actual exams). Also, these questions should
not be construed as a study guide. They do not provide information
about what you should and/or shouldn't study. They only provide
information on the form/style of the questions you can expect to see
on the exam.
Note that the answers to the sample questions will not be
made available. (Of course, you can easily check your answers to
the code-tracing and programming questions by executing the code.)
This is to help you avoid focusing too much attention on the
specifics of these questions. Instead, you should try and answer
different variants of each question. Then you should discuss the
questions and answers with other students enrolled in the course.
4 Sample Reference Cards
If needed, on the day of the exam you will be given reference cards
for the relevant parts of the Java API (in UML) and the equations
you might need to use. The following samples will give you a pretty
good idea of what those reference cards will contain.
Note that the reference cards can be quite long. So, you should not
plan on searching through them to find answers. In other words, don't
use the reference cards as a "crutch", and don't think of them as a
"cheat sheet". They are there in case you happen to forget the signature of
a method or two.