2010 AP Computer Science Discussion

<p>rofl i remember i saw an FRQ in my practices that I thought would take me at least a page to code and then I was like “they wouldn’t do that to me” so I thought about it for like 5 more min and then came up with a 1 line solution XD</p>

<p>i couldnt do ANY of the 2009 FRQ’s on the Collegeboard website. This sucks, I’m gonna fail this AP</p>

<p>Really? I found the frqs easy when I took it last year (except the gridworld which I BSed).</p>

<p>Yeah the 2009 were pretty easy, but I screwed up a bit on one where I returned the wrong value…oh well, it helps if you look at the sample answers when you are trying to score. the guidelines they give you tend to assume that you know what you are talking about (since they are used by the test graders)…</p>

<p>Do you guys think we’ll need to know how to write a search program from scratch for the FRQ? I don’t feel comfortable writing a mergesort or quicksort program especially.</p>

<p>well i’m memorizing those now</p>

<p>Barron’s said you don’t need to memorize search or sort algorithms, just understand how they work. And is quicksort on the test? I thought it wasn’t.</p>

<p>Randwulf, quicksort is optional.</p>

<p>Barron’s questions are tricky.</p>

<p>Quick sort is not on the test. They also won’t ask you to sort on the FRQ, but they might ask a question involving the sorts in the MC.</p>

<p>It seems that the Barron’s MC is a little bit more difficult than the actual thing and their FRQ is a little easier than the actual thing.</p>

<p>That frustrates me, because the whole reason I use Barrons is to know it is more difficult than the regular thing and that if I get a 5 on Barrons the actual thing is really easy. Now I’m not so sure.</p>

<p>All I know is whoever came up with the idea to have a gridworld study should have used something like Chess, where we all know how the moves are defined, but we have to look into the programming aspects to understand how each method works.</p>

<p>I would like that much better than some arbitrary grid with no set objectives and lots of different objects that aren’t particularly well defined.</p>

<p>I was doing a problem and it asked what was the next move for a BoxBug, and it had sideLength = 3, but the actual sideLength turns out to be 4. If you’re writing a class that has a value named sideLength, you better make it equal to the actual side length.</p>

<p>/rant.</p>

<p>How can its side length change? Maybe it was talking about the flowers (which is one more)</p>

<p>Rambling, if you look at the actual BoxBug code and how it’s run, sidelength IS 3. That’s just random bs Barron’s put in there</p>

<p>So, the sideLength is actually how many flowers are on a side?</p>

<p>It said is was sideLength 3 and then it showed this</p>

<ul>
<li>* X></li>
</ul>

<p>and it asked what is the next move and the answer was:</p>

<ul>
<li>* * X></li>
</ul>

<p>instead of </p>

<ul>
<li>* X
/</li>
</ul>

<p>I don’t know how sideLength can change, I was assuming that it can be set to whatever when the BoxBug is constructed (and the default constructor sets it to 3). Are there additional constructors that accept color, direction, intial loc, and sideLength? </p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>Do we take this test in pen?</p>

<p>No I’m pretty sure actual length is always one more than sideLength, so long as nothing is in it’s way.</p>

<p>OK I checked with the GUI, and Barron’s is right. if sidelength = x, then each sidelength IS x+1. That’s weird. Ignore my previous comment</p>

<p>Thanks. So BoxBug basically goes sideLength steps, from the spot so the length of the side is sideLength+1</p>

<p>And if it can’t move it will go sideLength steps 90 off of where it is currently looking.</p>

<p>That seems easy enough.</p>

<p>All I know is if I had it ask me for a length of the side I would say if there are four flowers on one side it has length 4, but thats just me.</p>

<p>Again, do we take this test in pen or pencil?</p>

<p>MC in pencil and FRQ in pen, unless it has changed.</p>