CS 151 Review for TEST 3
Chapter 8: Numeric Processing. Binary numbers revisited. Limits on the size of
numbers that can be stored/represented in a computer. Integer range. Conversion of real
(decimal) numbers (such as 14.75 or 6.25) to binary by using fractions. Limited
precision: implications. Floating point representation. Software libraries – programs
whose accuracy is confirmed. (Such as Mathematica – Lab 9) Specifics of spreadsheet
software, including nuts and bolts of Microsoft Excel. Common spreadsheet concepts.
Formulas in a spreadsheet. Relative and absolute cell references. (Note – this covers a
lot of the material from Lab 10) Built-in functions, including logical functions.
Displaying data in charts and graphs.
Chapter 9: Text processing. Text editors and word processors. The character set of a
text document. ASCII encoding of a character set – see Table 9.1. Invisible formatting
characters. Translation between word processing programs. RTF files. Specific details
of Microsoft Word. (go back and look at Lab 3) Spell-checkers and binary search trees.
Chapter 10: Databases. Files, records and fields. File management systems. Network
and relational database models. Know what each of these is good for – where they differ,
what are their strengths. Details of Microsoft Access (Lab 11 covers this) Query
languages – SQL, QBE. Natural language queries.
Chapter 11: Image Processing. Natural vs. artificial images. Digitization process –
sampling and quantizing. Picture resolution – number of pixels; usually expressed as a
product of dimensions. Aspect ratio of a picture. Black and white image processing –
storage requirements and grayscale conventions. Dynamic range of a measuring scale.
Color images. The RGB color system and 24-bit color images. The RGB color cube.
Storage requirements for color images. Image file formats, especially GIF, JPG, TIFF.
Chapter 12: Graphics – Creating images. Bit- mapped graphics. Some details of
storing images in memory as strings of bits. Rasterizing. Color images – using bitplanes
for storage. Vector graphics. Using equations to give concise specifications of an image.
(Lab 12 on VB graphics.)
Chapter 15: Data Compression – methods for making a data set more compact, usually
to facilitate faster storage or transmission. Coders and decoders (codecs) for
accomplishing this task. Lossless and lossy codecs. Symmetric and asymmetric codecs.
Encoding techniques: run-length encoding (RLE), Huffman encoding, LZW
compression. Know the difference among these three. Image storage and compression in
the GIF, JPEG and TIFF formats
