The first test will be given in class on Wednesday, February 23. The test will cover everything that we have done from the beginning of the term through class on Friday, February 18. This includes exceptions and the try..catch..finally statement; the analysis of algorithms; recursion; linked lists; the concept of abstract data types; stacks and queues; binary trees, binary sort trees, and expression trees. The reading for this material is Sections 8.3, 8.5, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, and 9.4. You are also responsible for what we've done in lab, including the basics of BufferedImage.
You can expect a variety of questions on the test. There will be some definitions and essay-type questions. There will be one or two questions that ask you to analyze the run time of some code. Some questions will ask you to write code segments or methods or possibly even complete classes. There might also be some questions that ask you to read some code and figure out what it does.
Here are some terms and ideas that you should be familiar with:
exceptions
how exception handling compares to other ways of dealing with errors
handling exceptions: the try..catch statement
the finally clause in a try statement, and why it might be used
throwing exceptions
checked exceptions and mandatory exception handling
questions of efficiency of a program
run-time analysis of algorithms
worst-case analysis and average case analysis
log2(n) and how it arises in analysis of some algorithms
"Big Theta" and "Big Oh" notation ( Θ(f(n)) and O(f(n)) )
comparing Θ(n) to Θ(log(n)), or Θ(n2) to Θ(n*log(n))
disregarding "constant multiples" and "lower order terms"
Linear Search and Binary Search
Selection Sort and Insertion Sort have run time Θ(n2)
Exponential run time, such as Θ(2n)
a program with exponential run time is infeasible except for very small inputs
recursion
recursive methods
recursive definition of the factorial function
the recursive version of binary search
base case of a recursion
maze-solving, blob-counting, and similar recursions
infinite recursion, and why "marking" locations as already visited is important
recursive geometric objects such as the Sierpinski Carpet
the QuickSort recursive algorithm
the idea of QuickSortStep (but not the detailed code)
the general idea of why QuickSort has average case run time Θ(n*log(n))
the worst case run time of QuickSort
activation records and how they are used to implement subroutine calls
How recursion is implemented using the stack of activation records
linked data structures
understanding names such as "employee.boss.name" and "node.next.next"
simple linked lists
the head of a list; why you always need to keep a pointer to the head
traversing a linked list; using a "runner" to move down the list
basic linked list processing, such as searching, or adding up items in a list
the meaning of "while (runner != null)" and "runner = runner.next"
adding a node to the head of a list
why working at the head of a list is often a special case
inserting and deleting nodes in a list
using a "tail" pointer in a list; adding a node at the end of a list
Abstract Data Types (ADTs)
alternative implementations of ADTs
relation of ADTs to interfaces and abstract classes
the "Queue" ADT
queue operations: enqueue, dequeue, isEmpty
how to implement a queue as a linked list with tail pointer
the "Stack" ADT
stack operations: push, pop, isEmpty
how to implement a stack as an array
how to implement a stack as a linked list
stacks are "LIFO"; queues are "FIFO"
using a stack or queue as an alternative to recursion
postfix expressions
algorithm for using a stack to evaluate a postfix expression
binary trees
recursive processing of a binary tree
recursive traversal of a tree
inorder, preorder, and postorder traversals
using a queue to process nodes in "breadth-first" order (aka "level order)
binary sort tree
inserting items into a binary sort tree
searching for an item in a binary sort tree
balanced binary tree
inserting/searching in a balanced binary sort tree has run time Θ(log(n))
expression trees to represent binary expressions
finding the value represented by a an expression tree
using different classes to represent different kinds of node in an expression tree
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Eclipse
javadoc, JavaDoc style comments, and why they are used
BufferedImage: image.getRGB, image.setRGB, g.drawImage(image,0,0,null)
using anonymous inner classes as event listeners
the idea of "resource files" in a program
version control system
CVS
sharing, importing, committing, and updating projects in CVS
Here are a few practice questions about pointers and linked data structures. These questions use the following classes:
class ListNode { class TreeNode {
String item; int item;
ListNode next; TreeNode left, right;
} }
1. Draw the data structure that is created by the following code segment:
ListNode n1, n2;
n1 = new ListNode();
n1.item = "Joe";
n1.next = new ListNode();
n1.item = "Jane";
n2 = new ListNode();
n2.item = "Jill";
n2.next = n1;
n2.next.next.next=n1;
2. Write a code segment that will find and print the longest string in the list. (If there are several strings with the same maximal length, output the one that comes first in the list.)
3. Write a method with one parameter of type ListNode and a return type of boolean. The method should test whether the items in the list are already sorted into increasing order.
4. Write a recursive method with one parameter of type TreeNode that finds the sum of all the numbers in the tree.
5. The height of a binary tree is defined to be the number of nodes on the longest path from the root to any leaf. The height of an empty tree is zero. Figure out how to compute the height of a non-empty tree from the heights of its left and right subtree, and write a recursive method, with a parameter of type TreeNode, to find the height of a binary tree.
6. Draw a binary tree containing at least 12 items, and list the items in the order that they would be visited by a pre-order, by an in-order, and by a post-order traversal.