Computer Science Test 1

This past week our class had our first computer science test. As like any other test, everyone was nervous leading up until the test day. I, like everyone else in the class, was no exception. Although this test was based on easy concepts like trees and stacks it also included recursion.

On the test there were two coding questions, and two tracing ones. The coding ones were based on stacks and recursion while, the tracing ones had a tree question and a recursive one. Personally I found the tracing questions to be very simple, since I understood the concepts. However, when it came to the coding I was not as sure. The stack question I had to write code for was fairly straightforward. On the other hand the recursive one gave me trouble.

The recursive question asked me to find if a given string is a palindrome or not. A palindrome is something that is the same forward or backwards. An example of a word that is a palindrome would be ‘civic’; meanwhile words like ‘honor’ is not a palindrome.

(above is a picture with two sections on the left is a cartoon panda sitting down with the caption " HONOR is a palindrome" while the right side is the same panda with a different caption saying " wait no it's not")

During the test it was hard for me to figure out a way to solve the problem without using a loop (one of the restrictions given). Thus this test showed me that I did not know recursion as well as I thought. In a way I am upset that I did not get the question right, however I am glad to figure out my weakness before final exams.  

This means more studying for me ....