Mission 4.0 GPA at SLIIT - Part 3

Earlier I thought of updating the blog everyday but for the last few days I couldn't because I wasn't in a good mood..... kind of fed up after all of these... This semester is not like the previous two semesters and the content we have to learn is very much high comparatively. So I got the feeling that I'm still not ready to expect getting 4.0 GPA this time which means I shouldn't be wasting time with blogging and extra work. So this will be the last post of this series of posts and the last post I'm writing until the exams are over. Therefore I'll tell you my plan to get good results.

All the reference books I have mentioned are available for downloading at "Thariya's Ebook Linker".Search under the given category.

Probability & Statistics

This is the most critical subject. Read my 1st post and 2nd post of this series and do the Crash Course book (Category : Probability & Statistics). Then you can get an idea about the units easily. Then start learning the units in the Text book. Then watch the videos on Probability and Statistics done by Khan Academy. You can watch and download them from "Amalan's Blog". Then try the exercises in the Text book. Do the Lab assignments on your own and get familiar with the SPSS generated outputs. Do the final exam past papers from 2007 to 2010. No need to do the repeat papers because that is really unnecessary. If you have more time, refer the "Probability & Statistics for Engineers & Scientists 8th Edition". The solution manual is also available for downloading (Category : Probability & Statics). 

Data Communication & Computer Networks II

This is the easiest subject for me. Read the text book and learn the concepts. Do the assignment on your own and learn about the protocols and get some idea about them. Do all the lab sheets so that you will learn the concepts without much effort. Visit Dinuka's Blog for more help.You can download the answers for all the lab sheets from here. Go through the lecture slides available in the course web. Refer the book 'TCP/IP Protocol Suite'. The power point presentation slides of this book are available for downloading at the Ebook Linker (Category : TCP/IP). Do the past papers from 2007 to 2010 without waiting till the last moment. Then you will see the pattern of the questions.

Software Technology II

Read the text book so that you won't repent if something in the book comes for the exam. Do all the lab sheets on your own. Do the past papers and also the tutorials. Get ready for the second online exam so that you can get rid of the score board pressure at the final exam. Do the programming assignment well and you are done.

Systems Programming & Design

This is one of the critical subjects but if you have the practical knowledge and hands on experience with Shell Scripting, System Calls, Perl and CGI, then it won't be that much hard. For shell programming, refer the book 'Unix Shell Programming' (Category : Shell Programming). For System Calls, refer the books 'Let us C' (Category : C) and 'Linux System Programming'  (Category : Systems Programming) . No need to read the whole book, just go through the relevant chapters.For perl programming read this post first and watch the lynda.com videos. Refer the book 'Learning Perl' (Category : Perl). For CGI scripting also lynda.com videos are really helpful. This is the link where I downloaded CGI/Perl videos. This is the link where I downloaded the CGI Essential Training videos. Read the text book and do the lab sheets also. Then try the past papers.

Software Engineering I

Go through the notes of the lectures. Do the group assignment well and understand the concepts. Then try the past papers. No need to refer the text book or any other reference book.

Hay everybody..... Let's get good results from the upcoming exams !!!

P.S - All the reference books I have mentioned are available for downloading at "Thariya's Ebook Linker".Search under the given category.

-Tharindu Edirisinghe-

-SLIIT 10'-

Mission 4.0 GPA at SLIIT - Part 2

Today is 20th March 2011 and it's 9 : 53 P.M. I'm going to write what happened today. The alarm rang at 4 : 00 A.M and I woke up and hurried to turn it off because I didn't want to wake up Isuru's parents by letting the alarm ring continuously. Isuru was sleeping and I tried to wake him up. Then he told me that he wanted to sleep another half an hour. So I continued learning the PS book alone. Isuru woke up at 4 : 30 A.M and we both did some questions together and discussed them.

The discussion was very much helpful where he asked me some questions which are really important and I figured out the answers on my own. For example do you know why the probability of getting an exact value in a continuous probability distribution is zero ? Think about it like this. Imagine the graph of the probability density function. Now the specific area under that particular value is the required probability. To get that area, you have to integrate the probability density function. When you integrate, both the upper and lower limits are equal to that particular value which you want to find the probability. So when you substitute them, the answer becomes zero. I hope you got it.

I came home around 11 : 00 A.M. Despite having a lot of work to do, I watched the movie 'Monsters'. That's my hobby. I can remember when I was doing the final exams of the last semester at SLIIT, even on the day before the exam started I watched a movie. After that I had a nap for around two hours and started the work again. 

I completed up to the chapter 6 of that PS Crash Course book and started doing some past papers. I  answered some questions in 2010, 2009 and 2008 P&S final past papers. The paper seems to be really easy than I expected. If you know the theories well and if you are good in analytical thinking, then it won't be hard. One thing I realized is that following only the text book is not enough. This PS crash course is really good in that case. For example in 2009 PS final paper, see the last part of the 1st Question. To answer that, you need to know that 

E [ X + Y ] = E [ X ] + E [ Y ]
E [ X - Y ] = E [ X ] - E [ Y ]
E [ X . Y ]  = E [ X ] . E [ Y ]
E [ c . x ] = c . E [ X ]
Var [ c . X ] = c ^2 Var [ X ]
Var [ X + Y ] = Var [ X ] + Var [ Y ]
Var [ X - Y ] = Var [ X ] + Var [ Y ]

These things are not in the PS text book. But they are in that PS Crash Course Book.

When answering the 1st Question of 2009 final paper, we have to draw a stem and leaf plot. I didn't know how to choose the stem width and leaves so that I used SPSS software to do it for me.

Click on the image to zoom it. See that every leaf is zero.

Then in 2008 final PS paper, Question 1. 

A stem and leaf plot is given. Stem width is 10. Here, in between the stem value and leaf value, a decimal point is not given. I have a little bit of confusion here. According to this, to get the values we have to concatenate the stem value and the leaf value and then multiply it by the stem width. Then we get values like 110, 120, 120, 130 .... and so on. 

I checked this further by putting some values in SPSS software. Click on the image below to zoom.

My input values were 11, 12, 12, 13, ... and so on. It gave me the stem width 10 and you see a decimal point in between the stem value and the leaf value. I hope to further clarify this at the PS help desk from Hansa sir.

I'll be continuously writing this series of posts until the exams start, so keep in touch with my blog. My instinct tells me what to do next and I simply follow that as I did in previous exams and got good results. So follow me and get good results.

-Tharindu Edirisinghe-
-SLIIT 10'-

Mission 4.0 GPA at SLIIT - Part 1

Today is 19th March 2011 and my clock shows the time as 11:33 P.M. Few minutes more to the mid night and I'm infront of Isuru's PC at his place. He is doing some PS questions and I'm little bit exausted now and so thought of writing something which will be useful to all my friends at SLIIT. 

We have around 1 month for the final exam at SLIIT. So I started getting ready for the exam today. So I came to Isuru's place and we are studying together. We have come up with a plan to get good results from the exam and I thought of sharing it with my friends. 

Now the most difficult and the critical subject is 'Probability and Statistics' (PS). Even I don't have a clear understanding on this subject. Unfortunately we don't have electives and it's a must to follow this subject. I found a good learning material which simply describes everything in this subject. That is "Schaum's easy outlines Probability and Statistics Crash Course". I got it printed because it's really worth learning.

You can download it from "Thariya's Ebook Linker" (Search under the category "Probability & Statistics"). 

At the moment I have completed three chapters from that. Now we are going to sleep. Hope to wake up at 4.00 A.M tomorrow and finish PS and try to answer some past paper questions. I hope everybody would follow this book and I want to see everybody getting 'A' passes for PS.

(Left : Isuru, Right : myself - Rocking PS)

-Tharindu Edirisinghe-

-SLIIT 10'-