Methodologhy

Instead of doing the practice MCQ for studying, I opted for a more traditional method of AP exam prepration. I tried working a little on the MCQ, however it was not helpful. As I was working on it, I felt as if I was not getting any more understanding by trying to work through those problems. This is because for me, I figured out that my weakness lied in my concpetual understanding of the big ideas. I ended up taking notes on the different units and concepts, and for me, it was much more helpful than the practice MCQs.

Proof of Attempt (MCQ)

Proof of Notes

Takeaway

Something big I learned and mastered was binary conversions. I was really bad at them, and for the longest time, I did not have a grasp on the methodology. All the lessons on it were unclear for me, so I took time and tried to learn it the old-fashioned way. I learned that the key was to do MOD(the number). Then, you divide that number by two and repeat the process until you get to MOD(1). After evaluating that, you write out the numbers from bottom to top.

I also learned a lot about connections and bits. I needed some extra help, and the supplementary Khan Academy videos and lessons really helped. I learned about bit rate as well, and that was good.

Analog data and the conversion of it was also another big point. Me, being a musician, found it fascinating that analog data has an infinite resolution. I also thought the conversion process was very interesting.

Along with everything else, I also learned about a number of different errors. I did not know what a roundoff error was prior to this, and this prompted me to dig deep into floating point representation.

Reflection

Overall, I found that the test’s application of these concepts was super confusing for me, and for the longest time I was stuck on certain problems. After the AP exam, I found that it was with the conceptual self-learning that I was able to answer questions about things like binary and redundancy. I had to self-teach everything to myself from the ground up, build up the fundamentals, if you will. I tried doing the MCQ, but I felt as if for me, it wasn’t doing anything to help and it would be a better use of my time to just use Khan Academy for taking notes and self-teaching.