2011 Computer Science Test Thoughts

<p>thanks man! really appreciate it.</p>

<p>lol erm. i’m very impressed for those who were able to tackle 4 so efficiently… my code was gross and very likely not correct. i did something weird like</p>

<p>for(int i = 0; i < Math.round(numCells / message.length); i++)
message.substring(i * numCells, (i +1) * numCells);</p>

<p>@AndrewT - I did not think #4 was the easiest. Especially 4B. But I did get something pretty similar to what you got. I initially starting writing something based off of my misunderstanding of the question. Then I realized I was wrong and X’ed out everything only to write “HIDE YO KIDS, HIDE YO WIFE!” on top of my scribble…lolll. Anyways…</p>

<p>I noticed on 4b that the fillBlock method ignores the part of the input that is larger than the table, so you can do something like this:</p>

<p>



String encrypted = "";
for (int i = 0; i < message.length(); i += numRows * numCols)
{
     fillBlock(message.substring(i));
     encrypted += encryptBlock();
}
return encrypted;


</p>

<p>If I’m not forgetting anything (just writing this on the fly here) then that seems to be the prettiest solution, in my opinion. Unfortunately, I just realized I messed up the AttractiveCritter question by returning an ArrayList of Location, argh! Could that possibly ding my score a significant amount?</p>

<p>^ dont worry, you can’t change anything now</p>

<p>@Cifer00 - substring takes two parameters :wink: . And wow, that’s so SIMPLE. I can’t ever seem to code like that. It’s like my writing. When most people write one or one and a half pages, I write two and a half.</p>

<p>this is gonna make me sound like im a ******bag, but im pretty sure my way is the shortest if i didnt have any mistakes xD, i might post it tonight if i remember some more details of wut i wrote</p>

<p>Actually!</p>

<p>There is an overloaded substring which only takes one character, and is equivalent to sustring(i, str.length()) – as in, it returns everything from the supplied index until the end of the string. (e.g. – “abcdefg”.substring(2) would return “cdefg”.)</p>

<p>Secondly, the fillBlock method ignores the part of the passed parameter string that is larger than the size of the array. So if you pass fillBlock a string with 9 characters, and the array is of size 2 * 3, then only the first six characters would fill the array and the remainder would be ignored.</p>

<p>Therefore, I believe that my answer would be the shortest possible way to do 4b.</p>

<p>(Also, I don’t mean to sound stingy! I just like arguing about Computer Science :P)</p>

<p>Cifer000: wow good thinking, I should have noticed that! And I don’t think your mistake will hurt you very much. I think getting processActors() right will probably give you the bulk of the points for that question.</p>

<p>DannyNobel: I’m not completely clear on how your method works, but it doesn’t sound like it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. When you call fillBlock(message), you’re ignoring the parts of message that do not fit into the block.</p>

<p>@Cifer000 - I actually didn’t know that lol. You don’t sound stingy. That would make sense though. And I also just noticed I missed the third 0 when I addressed you the first time. Sorry! :P</p>

<p>but in the fillBlock method, in section A, I believe i took care of that, can you expand on what you think i did wrong please?</p>

<p>As far as I can remember, the fillBlock method ignored any characters of the string that did not fit into the matrix.</p>

<p>That’s exactly what I did!</p>

<p>lol damit xD</p>

<p>@thes1tuation would using an ArrayList be a viable way to answer the sound question?? I said it should find the index of the first zeros and remove them from the ArrayList.</p>

<p>@ Cifer - THAT WAS DOWNRIGHT… SEXY. In a Computer Science way.</p>

<p>The exam was hard for me, but I should expect a 4. I self-studied the course by reading a Java textbook and taking a separate CC course. I learned everything in the AP Subset, but I had very little practice of the MC and FRQs. I actually looked over last year’s FRQs right before the exam. </p>

<p>My pacing wasn’t good enough, I answered 30 questions and then I had like 15 minutes left. Then I did two more and guessed in everything else. For FRQs I did most of them, skipping the second one and the second part of the last question. </p>

<p>In contrast, three people in my school including me took the exam, and both of them told me they didn’t study as well as me. One of them is actually taking 10 APs.</p>

<p>Honestly, I think this test was hard… The multiple choice questions were long, and a majority of them involved reading and interpreting page-length code segments, to save time I ended up skimming each piece of code and making educated guesses on a lot of the questions. On a few I just plain guessed. Realistically I probably got around 20-30 right :(</p>

<p>In my opinion, the FRQ’s were easier, but I still wouldn’t call them easy. They were challenging, but I think they were do-able to a certain extent</p>

<p>As a whole, this test was HARDER than the other practice AP’s where I got around 30-35 MC, and most if not full credit on each FRQ. But, it was a tiny bit easier than the Barron’s tests/review questions which were for the most part ridiculously hard and involved. Going into the test (based on the prior AP tests I did), I thought that it was a good possibility that I would get a 5. However, the test was comparatively difficult and I have the feeling I missed an opportunity for a 5, and now I’m hoping for a 4, fearing a 3. I never thought I would be that pressed for time that I had to guess and answer questions without at least some confidence, I’m sad and disappointed.</p>

<p>My thoughts:</p>

<p>mystery methods are still a pain as usual. I think i might have botched a few pick the code that works for the intended thing. Free responses were jokes. #2 wasnt as bad as you guys say it is. But it had a trick part to it(i believe). Did you guys just call the getoccupiedlocations? because that returns a list of locations, not actors.</p>

<p>edit:
i screwed up the fuel thing. so for the frq, im guessing… 8,8.5,7,7 to account for silly mistakes.</p>

<p>Do you think that I’ll get a 5 if I’ve got:
at least 32/40 in MC
approx. 28-32/40 in FR?</p>