Preparing for the exams

Its already December 1st. It's the end of the first semester which means it's the time for final exams.
For CSC104, having done all the quizzes, assignments,and tests, I know which parts I understand quite well and which sections I struggle with.
Overall, I did fairly well on the quizzes throughout the semester, and therefore, I think I am comfortable with DrRacket now.
Where I struggled in this course was the first sections of the term tests where there are definitions I had to know from the lecture notes and the extra notes posted on our website.
I think if I spend enough time studying the notes thoroughly, I can manage to do better on that part.
Here are few ways how I will prepare for the final exam:
1) Lecture notes and extra notes posted on the site.

• Spend a lot of time reading over all the materials carefully. If I don't spend enough time here, I will not know what to write during the exam.
• make my own study notes. I think it's a good way to memorize the terms in this course because there are handful of them.

2) DrRacket

• look through all the links posted on the website
• understand how check-expect and definitions work.
• know the definitions parts as well as interactions parts.

3) Managing myself

• start studying early so I have enough time to go over and understand all the materials
• Get a good sleep the night before so I will be able to concentrate during the exam
• Eat well before the exam.

Good luck to myself and everyone else with their exams!!

Project #2

I have finished my project #2 couple hours ago and I thought it went pretty well unlike the first project.
I found that the project #1 was quite hard and I received the mark which was below an average. I was a little disappointed that I could not manage myself to spend more time on the assignment.
Nevertheless, I found that the project #2 was far easier and I think I solved all the necessary parts that I had to solve which I was not able to do for the project #1.
Hopefully my mark for project #2 is a lot better than the first one.

Term test #2 mark and week #12

I received my mark for the term test #2 today and I did a lot better than I expected.
The score was an improvement from the term test #1 which makes me satisfied.
After the first term test, I understood what the test format and questions are like which is why I managed to score better on the second one.
Now that the two tests are over and only have one quiz left in the course, there will be final exam to prepare for.
I expect the format to be like the quizzes and the tests so hopefully I can do well on the final as well.

While I was preparing for my final quiz of the course, I ran into some difficulty on DrRacket coding.
In tutorial #9 handout, we were told to fix the definition in spiral.rkt. All other parts I was able to make the correction. Nevertheless, I couldn't pass the tests for the part below.


; make-palindrome : string -> string
; Produce palindrome from s
(check-expect (make-palindrome "a") "a")
(check-expect (make-palindrome "ab")
              (string-append
               (substring "ab" 0 1)
               (make-palindrome (substring "ab" 1))
               (substring "ab" 0 1)))
(check-expect (make-palindrome "Danny")
              (string-append
               (substring "Danny" 0 1)
               (make-palindrome (substring "Danny" 1))
               (substring "Danny" 0 1)))
;
(define (make-palindrome s)
  (cond
    [(equal? (string-length s) 1) s]
    [else
     (string-append
      (substring s 0 1)
      (make-palindrome (substring s 1))
      (substring s 0 1))]))

I had to ask the TA at the tutorial just now to figure out the correct answer for this definition.
Before then, I was stuck for a while and wrote something like this.


(define (make-palindrome s)
  (cond
    [(equal? s "a") s]
    [else
     (string-append
      (substring s 0 1)
      (make-palindrome (substring s 1))
      (substring s 0 1))]))

This, for obvious reason, did not pass the test.
Now that the TA explained to me how it works, I understood why the above is not correct answer.
We will see how I do on my last quiz of the course!

Wikipedia

Part 3 of Wikipedia assignment was due last night.
I managed to finish all three parts of the assignment.
The difficulty I had with this assignment was uploading images.
Wikipedia had some strict copyright rules so I could not upload some images that I thought would contribute significantly to improve the article.
Therefore, I uploaded some of my own photos to help improve the site.
From this assignment, I realized that I could actually help out on some ways and contribute to the community on Wikipedia.
Since high-school, I used the Wikipedia frequently but never had any experience of contributing to Wikipedia.
From doing this assignment, I learned that many people have made significant contribution on this site. Otherwise, Wikipedia would not have been widely used by many people.

Project #1

I finished my first project last night.
I found it quite challenging and could not solve all the problems...
There were some tests that I could not pass and the clock itself did not work the way I wanted to...
When I pressed run on my assignment, the second-hand was rotating counter clockwise, not clockwise.
The other hands were rotating clockwise but I had difficulty in fixing the second-hand.
By the time I managed to fix it, I ran out of time and could not hand in the fixed file.
I think the biggest problem with this project for me was that I was overloaded with my other courses so I left this project up until the last minute.
I got anxious because I was running out of time.. maybe that's why I could not solve some problems.
From now on, I won't leave my assignments up until the deadline and finish early so I have enough time to carefully think and analyze the problems.

Term test #1

We had our first term test which I found it to be okay...

It was not too easy but not extremely difficult either.
The first parts of the test was difficult for me because I did not expected to know some of the definitions in great details.
Otherwise, I think the rest of the test went fairly well and I'm hoping for a good mark.

SLOG FOR CSC

I'm starting my SLOG for this course. 

This course, so far, has been fairly straightforward. 

I've done pretty well on the quizzes up until now and the course itself is actually quite interesting.

We have our first term test coming up and I am wondering how that will be like.