CS 481: Material for the Final

Coverage in brief: everything covered in the semester

Format: 2-hours in-class test, May 13 in the morning. There will likely be 6 questions, 2 on processes (scheduling, concurrency, etc.), 2 on memory management and virtual memory, and 2 on the new material (say one on file systems and one on protection).

Importance of final: many of you have a stable grade at this stage -- i.e., consistent grades on homework and tests; if you are in such a case, the final is highly unlikely to decrease that grade (short of getting a 10 or a 0!), but it can raise it. Since the final is comprehensive, I will assume that, if you do well on it, you have mastered the class material (even if only belatedly) and raise your grade to reflect that. Many others of you have an unstable grade: your two tests show quite different scores and your homework has no clear pattern; in that case, the final will help me decide which of the two grades was closer to the truth -- or whether the average is actually right.

Recommended reading

  • Sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, and 1.5
  • all of Chapter 3
  • Sections 5.1 through 5.6 and 5.10 through 5.15
  • Sections 6.4 and 6.9
  • Section 7.13
  • Sections 8.1 through 8.19
  • Sections 10.4 through 10.15
  • Sections 11.1, 11.2, 11.7, 11.8, and 11.9
  • Sections 12.1 through 12.7, 12.10 through 12.15
  • Sections 16.1, 16.2, 16.4, and 16.5
  • Sections 17.1, 17.2, and 17.3
  • Sections 19.7 and 19.10

    • That is a lot of reading. My recommendation is that you study for the final by making sure you are comfortable with all the homework and test questions through the semester and by working out at least some of the problems on the 3 sample "tests", referring to the sections listed above only to refresh your memory about a specific topic. If you know you are weak on some specific topic, say semaphores, then do start by reading the relevant sections, then return to the approach outlined above.

    Note: change in plans -- the NSF meeting I am going to will be Sunday and Monday. So I will be present for the test, but still absent the day before.

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