Midterm topics - CPSC 1000
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Wed. Feb 27, 9 AM, TH 201
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Text: Fluency with Information Technology, Snyder, 3-rd Ed

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Ch 1: Terminology of IT
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- component/monolithic computers
- bitmapped monitors
- pixels, colors (more in the lecture on multimedia)
- motherboard, RAM, Hard disc,
- saving data
- algorithms/programs
- executing a program
- booting
- WYSIWYG

Ideas: abstraction, generalization in IT
       understanding the idea of "factor of improvement"


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Ch 2: Human Computer Interaction
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- metaphors + examples
- principle "Form follows function" + examples
- searching text (up to p. 52); you do not need to worry about
  "editing text using substitution".


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Ch 3: Networks, Internet
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- communication types (broadcast / peer to peer)
- circuit/packet switched nets
- types of network connections, ex: wired and wireless, how data are
  encoded for transmission


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Ch 8: Data representation
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- digitizing discrete information
- encoding, how we can assign symbols to data, and what principle
  should be observed (we need to interpret the info back from the
  representation, so we need a sufficient number of symbols)
- types of data, numeric and text + their encoding
- what are bits and bytes
- you need to understand that bits can represent many things, and it
  is up to "us" to interpret them appropriately.


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Ch 9: Hardware 
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- main components of a computer (ALU, memory, processor, I/O) +
  + roles 
- what is decoding an instruction?
- memory, memory location, addresses, and values
- program counter
- fetch execute cycle of a processor, main steps!
- system clock 
- what is an operating system + role
- program vs algorithm, what it means to program a computer
- transistor, role and how it works (main idea); what is the field effect
- what are integrated circuits. What does "integrated" refer to?
- what is "booting"
- what is a file system



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Ch 14: Spreadsheets & Ch. 15 up to page 423.
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- what are spreadsheets
- cells and types of data (value, text, formulae)
- what is a date/time? 
- difference between data type and data format (format = how data is
  displayed) 
- operations on dates and time (+/-,...)
- absolute and relative references
- fill handle
- basic operations with data (sorting, if function, max and sum, etc);
  check the examples and understand how data is manipulated but you
  need not study the examples in depth.
- importing/exporting spreadsheet data, what is does and goal (to make
  available to other applications by representing data with text)
- understandf the IF function (this is explained in Chapter 15)