Just received back my marked TMA02. 89% so I'm happy with that but, you know what.....it could have been higher. Could have been, that is, if I hadn't made a couple of elementary mistakes!
Mistake number 1 - Only answered part of a question. I manage to do this on almost every course that I do - just completely miss a subquestion. When I saw my tutors comments ( "Simon, I think you must have missed the question...") I thought, "No, there is a mistake, there was no part of the question like that.....", and then, just to make sure, I re-read the TMA paper. And there it was, as plain as the nose on my face. And the bit that I missed out was so easy to implement - it would have been two minutes work. How daft is that.
Mistake number 2 - only using 12 bits for a memory address instead of 16. Now this is just so obvious, and I really can't believe that I wrote what I did. At least I was consistent about it - and my tutor did pick me up on it (although didn't penalise me for it). This is what it is about: Suppose that some data is written to memory location F02. When writing that down one should really write 0F02 (ie, use a leading zero). Its pernickety, but it is correct....and its something I have always done in the past. So why didn't I do that it the TMA?
Mistake number 3 - Now this is the one that I am really going to learn from - when a TMA question uses the word 'find' it means show the workings out and write down the answer. All I did was write down the answer (which I did get correct). The question was to do with ANDing and ORing hex values. I do these in my head and just write the answers down - I've done it this way for years - and it never occurred to me to show the workings. I did raise this with my tutor and he explained that there had been some debate about this - but that the course team are insisting that this is what it means and that is how it should be done. Well, I can live with that. His advice is to always show the workings out.
But now I am wondering whether there are other 'code words' that have specific meanings when used in questions - there must be a list somewhere. If I find out what they are I will place them in a new blog entry - I'm sure I'll not be the only person caught out by these.
Well, thats it. I should get the TMA for MT262 back soon.
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2 comments:
Re: Missing the leading zero off 0F02. Is it possible to blame Bill Gates for this one? Many times when I'm working with MS Office, Bill interferes with basic formatting in subtle ways (the deactivation of which is not made simple.) I just wondered whether Uncle Bill had been watching over your shoulder and taken the liberty of removing the leading zero. It wouldn't surprise me!
Hi Greg, Well thats a thought - and there a few things that we can blame Bill for (and some good things too). But this time I have to take responsibility for the missing 0.
Of course, there's always the possibility that the zero moved from the front of my 0F02 in the TMA and implanted itself on the end of Bill's bank balance - he's got so many zeros there already that one more might go unnoticed for ages!
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