XML CO527 Anonymous Questions and Answers Keyword Index

This page provides a keyword index to questions and answers. Clicking on a keyword will take you to a page containing all questions and answers for that keyword, grouped by year.

To submit a question, use the anonymous questions page. You may find the keyword index and/or top-level index useful for locating past questions and answers.

Keyword reference for exams

Question 31 (2013):

Submission reference: IN2879

Is there anything in particular we should be prepared for on the exam? Is there anything specific that we should be studying?

Answer 31:

The bottom line is pretty much everything, unless we've explicitly said that it's non-examinable (at the time in a lecture, for instance). Past papers (linked on moodle) will give you a good idea of what sorts of questions to expect. The architecture half of the module has changed this year, so I'll put together some mock questions based on the new content in the next week or so. It's worth bearing in mind that we expect you to spend in excess of 40 hours, on average, revising for this module — and similarly for other modules. The exam will, of course, test understanding as much as knowledge, so just attempting to fill your brain with facts isn't a good strategy here — there needs to be an understanding built on that knowledge.

Keywords: exams

Question 27 (2012):

Submission reference: IN2394

1. Hello, while studying and doing past papers for CO527, I have noticed a few small questions from earlier papers that have not been covered in the lectures should I ignore those questions?
2. Also do we need to remember diagrams? Like process state transition, or communication primitives etc.?
3. Lastly in the paper in section A we need to answer 7 parts however if we get 5 parts correct we gain full marks is it possible to skip out some parts? I do understand its better to answer them all but is it still possible to skip some?

Answer 27:

1. Yes, ignore those (within reason). Some questions may be based on content that we'd expect you to know anyway (e.g. from CO324 or just general computing knowledge), and other questions may provide you with the information needed to answer, in addition to those that you cannot answer because we didn't teach that content this year. Footnote: the content does change slightly year-to-year, but there have been some larger step-changes (e.g. from CO501 to CO527).
2. No, you do not need to commit those diagrams to memory. However, I would expect you to be able to recreate such diagrams, but through understanding the information that the diagram is conveying, not by memorising where the lines, boxes and labels go. This relies on an understanding of the concepts; if you don't or cannot get this, then memorising the diagrams is the only option really, but it's not a good way to spend time (which would be better spent gaining understanding).
3. Yes, if you answer 5 of the 7 parts completely correctly, you'll get all the marks for section A. Historically, no-one has ever managed this.

Keywords: exams