The Muslim CompSci

Monday, 14 January 2019

A Day In The Life Of A King's College CompSci #50 (ADITLOAKCCS)

As Salamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh World!

The first day of the semester was underwhelming to say the least. Maybe I built it up too much in my mind which is why it ended up being so ordinary but, I digress. For some reason, the timetable indicated a 2-hour Data Structures lecture followed by an hour’s tutorial but in actuality, it ended being a really boring 3-hour lecture.

Perhaps it was because I already knew about recursion so found the content rather elementary, hence my inability to pay attention for the most part. Regardless, I hope the labs for this module prove interesting otherwise the semester looks very bleak based on the introductory lecture alone.

On the plus side, I have managed to acquire a seat on the train which is a rarity, especially during peak hours. Tomorrow on the other hand, is going to be one of the most pointless days of the year. I only have a 30-minute discussion with my personal tutor and that’s it. Literally.

So, I spend an hour travelling to university and an hour going home just to attend half an hour’s worth of God knows what. In fact, it’s going to be so pointless that I could actually make tomorrow’s post today. At least my timetable has improved significantly this semester, instead of seven 9am starts per fortnight I now only have 1 which is a big plus. Anyway, that’s pretty much it for now.

Hope this helps!

A Day In The Life Of A King's College CompSci #49 (ADITLOAKCCS)

As Salamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh World!

Today’s exam was the last of the semester and all I could think of was that weekend that ensued after it would be over. I initially thought that the Elementary Logic with Applications would prove to be the most difficult, not because the content is hard but because I revised very little for it since at the end of the day, it’s “just” logic.

One thing that is true and somewhat reassuring is that with this module, most questions are verifiable via truth tables so you can have peace of mind for the most part. Others, are quite somewhat ambiguous so you’ll never really know if you got it right until you get your results.

Anyways, this exam was also 2 hours long and had 15 mcqs worth 10 marks each. Even though I was familiar with the exam rubric beforehand, I was still quite surprised at how a relatively mathematical module can be completely based on mcqs.

All in all, it turned out to be quite straightforward indeed. That’s all for now.

Hope this helps!

A Day In The Life Of A King's College CompSci #48 (ADITLOAKCCS)

As Salamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh World!

Contrary to the previous exam, the Foundations of Computing exam was only partially multiple choice. There were a total of 14 questions for 10 marks each, 6 of which were not multiple choice. Another difference was that there could be more than one right answer for each of the 8 mcqs so the mind games increased exponentially. The only thing that was completely the same was the 2 hour duration.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a question with all 4 answers being correct, otherwise It would mean you could easily guess and basically get full marks. Still, even questions with 3 right answers can give you a bit of doubt. Normally questions have 2 or 1 right answers so when you think a question has 3 answers, be sure to double check.

Regardless, the exam was still rather elementary but hey, that’s expected in the first year I guess especially if you’ve done A level Computer Science. Despite a lot of people leaving early, I still decided against it even though I finished nearly an hour early.

Hope this helps!

A Day In The Life Of A King's College CompSci #47 (ADITLOAKCCS)

As Salamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh World!

I didn’t initially think I would count exam days as actual “days” in this series but since I haven’t posted for a while for obvious reasons, I thought I’d make a quick blog anyway. The first 2-hour exam, which was for Computer Systems was 50 mcqs (that’s multiple choice questions for the uninitiated) each of which carried 2 marks each.

Every question only had one answer so that was somewhat relieving but overall, multiple choice questions can end up playing mind games on you if you’re unsure about a question. For instance, let’s say you put 3 Cs in a row and in the next question, you can’t decide between options B and C.

Instinctively, you would go with B if you’re completely unsure since it’s highly unlikely that 4 questions in a row have the answer C. But, there’s always the off-chance that the teacher is trying to throw you off by doing that exact thing so, I guess you just have to make an educated guess.

Anyway, probably the most difficult part of the day was actually locating the exam venue since it was an external hall away from university. Luckily, I thoroughly planned my route the night before utilising Street View on Google Maps so it didn’t turn out to be too hard after all.

Even though the exam itself was relatively easy, I’ve never understood the point of leaving an exam early. There’s always a chance that you’ve overlooked a silly mistake so instead of leaving, I decided to stay for about half an hour till the exam ended to check my answers multiple times.

That’s all for today, be sure to check out the next day’s post!

Hope this helps!