Final Exam Topics

The final examination will be cumulative. To study you should do the following (over a period of several days - not just the night before the exam!):

1. Look at each of the topic sheets for the other tests for a detailed list of topics.

2. Re-do each test, quiz, and pre-lab. Most of the exam questions will be very similar to questions from earlier tests, quizzes or prelabs or on concepts covered on those.

3. Review the book, notes, class handouts and lab handouts. Rework practice problems for topics such as base conversion, twos complement, logic, circuits, writing code.

4. Do the Exam Review Exercises handed out in class (also posted on Blackboard).

5. Be sure to study the following topics covered since Test #3:
   • Understand method overloading (Section 6.8)

   • Understand static constants, static variables and static methods (Section 6.3)

   • Understand the various types of class dependencies (Section 6.4)

   • Understand the references, aliases, garbage, and the difference between variables of primitive type and those that are objects. (Section 3.1)

   • Understand how parameters are passed. Be able to illustrate your understanding by tracing a sequence of code and showing how memory is used - what memory is used during the execution of a method versus that used by the program (method) that calls the method.

   • Understand what the this reference is (page 310)

   • Understand the equals method and be able to write an equals method for a class.

   • Know about character codes (Unicode and ASCII) and how we can work with characters and their codes using casting.