The final exam will be given in our classroom Wednesday June 11 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. The exam is comprehensive, closed-book, has 125 points, and is worth 25% of your grade.  You will have the entire exam period to take the exam. The exam will be a combination of multiple choice, matching and short answer questions.

Note: I hand out two versions of the exam. They differ only in the order of questions. The students on your left and right will have the other version.

Expect relatively more questions over topics we have covered since the second exam.

Some questions will come directly from the first two exams (with minor alteration), so I recommend you study them.

Lecture notes are available at http://faculty.otterbein.edu/PSanderson/CSC100/schedule.html

By posting your journal comments, I've discovered that a form of Jeopardy!® has evolved -- many of your comments are the answers to exam questions! Consider the Journal page http://faculty.otterbein.edu/PSanderson/CSC100/journals.html as another exam study resource.

Chapter 1 - Introduction

• The purpose of computers and what they do, in general terms
• What distinguishes the generations of computers (e.g. tubes, transistors, ICs)
• How data and information and instructions are represented in a computer

Video - Giant Brains

• Computer origins and history from Jacquard looms to Babbage to ENIAC to today

• How to count using binary numbers
• What kinds of things are stored in binary (everything!)
• Components of a computer, their acronyms, and what they do
• The instruction cycle
• Units of measure such as bits, bytes, hertz, kilo-, mega-, giga-
• Some basics of how digital cameras work
• Characteristics of various storage devices: RAM, disk, CD/DVD, tape

• What the stored program concept is
• The distinctions between application, system, and translation software, with examples
• Textual (DOS) versus graphical (Mac, Windows) styles of operating systems
• The basic duties of an operating system

• Spreadsheet terminology (worksheet, cell, row, column, etc)
• What cells can contain (values, labels, formulas)
• What formulas are and what causes them to be recalculated
• Relative versus absolute cell references
• How to reference a different cell, cell range, or worksheet

Chapter 6 - Graphics

• What pixels are, where pixel values are stored and what the values represent
• Basics of RGB and CMY color systems
• Comparing monitors to printers: resolution and color systems
• Difference between raster (bitmap) and vector (object-oriented) graphics
• Factors that determine storage requirements of digital audio/video (sampling rate, sample size, compression)

Chapter 7 - Databases

• Database terminology (table, record, field, key field, query, etc)
• What SQL is
• What a relational database is

Chapter 8 - Network Communication

• The difference between analog and digital signals.
• Basic differences among network connections: dialup modems, DSL, cable modem, LAN, Wi-fi.
• Basic facts about Ethernet (the transmission protocol used in most LANs)
• Transmission media and characteristics: copper wire (twisted pair, coax), fiber optic, wireless

Chapter 9 - The Internet

• Origins of the Internet.
• The difference between client-server and peer-to-peer applications
• two forms of internet addresses: numeric IP address and domain name address
• What each component of a URL is.
• What the Domain Name System (DNS) is and why it is critically important
• What HTML and HTTP are, and how they are different.
• basics of HTML (what HTML means, what tags are, how they are used, what the browser does with them)

Chapter 10 - Security and Risks

• what spyware, spoofing and phishing are, and how they are used to commit fraud and theft
• What viruses, worms, Trojan horses can do, and how you get them and prevent them.
• What denial-of-service attacks are, and how zombies contribute
• Difference between traditional (secret key) encryption and public key encryption.

Chapter 14 - System Design and Development

• what an algorithm is
• what top-down design is and when it is needed (break to subproblems, solve them, combine solutions)
• basic problem solving approach (understand problem, device plan, carry out plan, evaluate)
• recognize major phases of software development lifecycle and their sequence
• Recognize the 3 programming language concepts: sequence, selection, iteration

Scratch (not in textbook)

• Be able to point out examples of sequence, selection and iteration, given an example Scratch program.
• Basic Scratch concepts: sprite, costume, script, stage, block.

Chapter 15 and Video - Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• What the Turing test for AI is.
• The difference between the brain and the mind (analogy of brain to hardware and mind to software).
• Two approaches to solving AI: imitate the structure and operations of the brain ("hard AI"), imitate the reasoning process of the mind ("soft AI")
• What a knowledge base is, and what it consists of (it consists of facts and rules).
• One or two practical applications of AI (expert systems, neural networks, robots)

Final Topics

• how humans and technology may relate in the future

Study hard and good luck!