The final exam will be given in our classroom Wednesday March 17 (St. Patrick's Day!) from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. The exam is comprehensive, closed-book, closed-notes, 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 a little more weight on 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/COMP100/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! The Journal page http://faculty.otterbein.edu/PSanderson/COMP100/journals.html is a great exam study resource.

Video - Giant Brains

• Jacquard looms of 1800 were like "stored program" computers because the patterns of holes in punched cards determined the woven pattern; change the cards, different patterns
• Charles Babbage designed mechanical computers in the 1840's
• Ada Augusta Byron was the world's first computer programmer because she designed instructions to control Babbage's Analytical engine
• Before World War II, "computer" was defined as a person. After the war, it was defined as a machine
• The ENIAC was an 1940's electronic computer built from vacuum tubes, which were 1000 times faster than relays
• Mathematician John von Neumann developed the structure for modern computers: (1) processor, (2) memory to hold both data and instructions, and (3) input and output devices for communication
• Alan Turing is most well known for the Turing test: If you converse using keyboard and monitor with remote entity and think it to be human, then if it turns out to be a machine the machine can be considered to have intelligence

Chapter 2 - Understanding the Parts

• Generations of electronic computers: vacuum tubes, then transistors, then integrated circuits (chips)
• "Moore's Law" says the number of elements on a fixed size chip can be doubled about every two years. Smaller, more powerful, faster!
• how to count using binary numbers
• what kinds of things are stored in binary (everything!)
• units of measure such as bits, bytes, hertz, kilo-, mega-, giga-
• typical input and output devices
• Main processor is called Central Processing Unit (CPU) and it runs at 2-3 gigahertz (GHz)
• main memory is very fast but "volatile", loses contents when shut off.
• Flash memory, disk drives, CDs, DVDs are all non-volatile.
• some basics of how digital cameras work
• some basics of how monitors and printers work
• the RGB and CMY color systems for monitors and printers, respectively
• Images compressed using JPEG, sound compressed using MP3. Both reduce to 1/10 original size but information is lost ("lossy").

Chapter 3 - The Internet

• Internet originated in 1969 with the ARPANET
• The Web was invented in 1989, 20 years later
• Internet is a delivery service like FedEx. The Web as one type of package it can deliver.
• Email, chat, instant messaging, file downloading, online games, and online news all were available on the Internet before the Web
• Newer Internet services: Webcasts, blogs, wiki, social networking, e-commerce and VoIP.
• Web browsers and servers communicate using the HTTP protocol. HTTPS is "secure" HTTP, so you can safely transmit private data.
• Search engines have two parts: (1) web "spiders" that automatically request web pages and then catalog their contents into a database, and (2) the part that searches the database for content that matches your request.
• Cookies are little files on your hard drive put there by web sites. They contain information about your past use of their site. Most people consider them convenient and harmless
• Spyware is software that monitors your computer usage. Some is harmless but annoying like adware. Some is harmful because it logs your keystrokes and can steal private data you type.
• Every computer on the Internet has a unique numeric address called an IP address
• The DNS service translates text addresses like www.amazon.com into their correct IP addresses.
• Wired access to the Internet includes: dialup, DSL, Cable, and LAN. Dialup is slow, DSL and Cable offer comparable performance, and LAN available within an organization
• Wireless access to the Internet includes: satellite, cell-based, and Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is only an indirect connection
• Web pages are written in a language called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML.
• Be able to recognize some common HTML tags.
• Web browsers translate the HTML into what is displayed.

Ethical Issues (Technology In Focus between chapters 3 and 4)

• digital divide : what it is, its causes, remedies
• online medical information : benefits and risks
• boundaries of the Internet : each nation has its own laws and constitution; do they apply to an Internet without national boundaries?

Chapter 4 - Software Applications

• what the stored program concept is (program is stored in memory with data)
• the distinctions between application and system software, with examples
• basic knowledge of various application categories: productivity, media, entertainment, business
• what cloud computing is
• difference between commercial software, shareware, and freeware
• software ownership and licensing

Chapters 9,10,11 - Spreadsheet Concepts

• what a spreadsheet is
• significance of spreadsheet software in the history of the PC
• spreadsheet terminology (workbook, worksheet, cell, row, column, etc)
• what cells can contain (text labels, numeric values, formulas)
• what formulas are and what causes them to be recalculated
• automatic formula recalculation permits easy exploration of "what if" questions
• what a function is and how to use one
• how to reference a cell or a range of cells on the same worksheet or on a different worksheet
• what happens to cell references when you copy/paste a formula
• distinction between relative and absolute cell references
• basic charting concepts and guidelines

Chapter 5 - System Software

• what system software is and does (operating system)
• single-task and multi-tasking operating sytems, and how multiple tasks share the CPU
• the basic booting process
• textual (DOS, Linux) versus graphical (Mac, Windows) styles of operating system user interface
• OS duty: processor (CPU) management and multi-tasking through time-slicing,
• OS duty: memory (RAM) management and multi-tasking through space-slicing
• OS duty: disk management for file and folder storage
• OS duty: device management through drivers, which are external to the OS and provided by device manufacturer

Chapter 6 - Assessing Hardware

• Components of a computer, their acronyms, and what they do
• The machine (instruction) cycle: fetch, decode, execute, store
• Characteristics of various storage devices: RAM, disk, CD/DVD
• RAM is volatile. Disk, flash, CD, DVD are not
• RAM is a million times faster than hard drives
• RAM and flash are solid state - no moving parts
• Hard drives, floppies and tape are magnetic
• CDs and DVDs are optical
• Basic organization of a hard drive: tracks, sectors, blocks. rotational and seek delay

Chapter 8 - Databases

• what a database is
• the problems of inconsistent and redundant data
• database terminology (table, record, field, key field, query, etc)
• database table looks much like a spreadsheet's worksheet but similarity ends there
• "normalizing" is process of making sure data are not unnecessarily duplicated
• importance of keeping database records sorted (permits much faster searching; imagine a phone book that's not sorted!)
• what a relational database is
• what SQL is

Software Development and Scratch (not in textbook)

• basic problem solving approach (understand problem, device plan, carry out plan, evaluate)
• what top-down design is and when it is needed (break to simpler subproblems, solve them, combine solutions)
• basic software development activities: investigation, analysis, design, programming, maintenance, testing
• 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 7 - Networks and Security

• LAN is "Local Area Network" such as your home, office, organization, school
• WAN is "Wide Area Network" such as the Internet
• LAN (Ethernet) network structure and operation
• Transmission media and characteristics: twisted pair, coax, fiber optic, wireless
• The difference between client-server applications(e.g. web browsing) and peer-to-peer applications (e.g. Limewire file sharing)
• The role of network interface cards
• Basic home network structures, including extension through routers
• Difference between Wireless Access Point and Wireless Router in a home network
• What malware is
• what spyware 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
• What a firewall is
• Risks of WiFi usage in public places

Artificial Intelligence (not in textbook)

• What the Turing test for AI is (see Giant Brains, above).
• 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, imitate outward behaviors
• What a knowledge base is, and what it consists of (facts and rules).
• One or two practical applications of AI (expert systems, neural networks, robots)

Study hard and good luck!