My Score

All things considered, I think this was a good start to my year in terms of scoring. There were a couple things I didn’t understand, but for the most part, I had a pretty solid understanding of the whole test. I also completed it in a fairly reasonable amount of time.

Corrections

Here are the problems I got wrong and how I can improve on them.

Q23 manipulate method and animals List

The note about what I got incorrect got my mistake pretty much exactly correct. I was acting as if “the remove occurred before the size was calculated in the statement animals.add(animals.size()-k, animals.remove(k))” when considering specifically where “baboon” would end up. This is one of the questions I checked my answers on with Quizlet but it looks like the flashcards I used to check were incorrect themselves.

I think an overall good note for myself going forward would be to be more careful about indexing.

Q25 RBox interfaces

This is one I thought I fully understood, and the reason I got it wrong didn’t even have to do with how much code and implementation commenting there was.

I got this one wrong because I assumed the question was asking which would be sufficient to compare code between two boxes, so I assumed both “I” and “III” weren’t sufficient because they only provided information for a single specific box. Upon further consideration, though, “I” could be used to compare two boxes the two are used independent from one another and then later used to compare. This is an issue where I needed to expand my considerations on a potential implementation of the given code.

Difficult Questions

Here are questions I found difficult. These are the questions I used Quizlet to verify my answers on, though I never copied my answers directly from Quizlet.

De Morgan’s Law

Part of my struggle with these problems is that I don’t have the law memorized. I’ve had to look back at my notes from the student lesson to remember it for both of these problems, and even then I took forever to double check my work. Quizlet was the only reason I was confident in my answers. I did get them both right the first time I tried them before looking them up, but still.

Q39 recur method with int parameter

The fact that I got this one is kind of magical. I was pretty much set to ship “18” because I only saw recur(9) being the final output, but then I realized that the recur method calls are nested. I worked through the rest of it in my head with some difficulty. I also felt obligated to include this one because I checked Quizlet to make sure I wasn’t tripping out on the nested recursion, so I saw the answer but I never trust Quizlet and did it myself.

Reflection

Glows:

  • Good conceptual knowledge of important Java concepts
    • Constructors and method calls
    • Private vs public scope
    • Iteration and recursion
    • Arrays and ArrayLists
  • Good reading of questions
    • Thoroughness made me less susceptible to missing a question because I read it wrong
  • Well-paced work

Grows:

  • De Morgan’s law needs practice
    • Memorize pattern
    • Gain understanding of why; this should improve my ability to implement it
    • Practice with the problems shown above
  • Working with indexing
    • Consider removed elements when working with iteration
    • Consider direction of movement