Ok, so. I'm almost done with school now, but hoping to stay on to do a computing course at AS/A Level ( I live in the UK incase this confused some Americans ) and while looking through one of the exams I had got from the head of ICT at my school, I noticed there were some question based on Algorithms, offering quite a few marks each.
What I really need is somewhere to start and something basic to start with. I have some experience with coding (Extreme Novice in C++) and while looking at the algorithm in the exam I had been able to understand some of it due to the structure and how it looked in general.
Also any help on C++ Would be appriecated in the meanwhile. I am currently working through this ( http://www.cplusplus.com/files/tutorial.pdf ) tutorial and I have reached roughly pages 73-75, writing down all the code examples, which seems to help alot more than just reading through it all. I use Codeblocks ( http://www.codeblocks.org/ ) for coding and compiling.
If there is any way in which I can encorporate the learning of the two together then it may help me make more sense of both of them, or it will confuse to a point where I forget how to cry. I guess we'll find out.
The questions are mainly based around drawing flowcharts, Explaining functions, and fixing broken lines in code. But instead of only knowing these I would like to learn alot more about algorithms just incase a differant type of questions shows up when I do my exam.
Do you know what language the broken lines of code will be in? I am asking since you will definately have an easier time if you study the language which will be used in the exam.
I am guessing that the sort of "algorithms" they will want you to know the basics of will be how to sort a random set of numbers in order decending or acending, getting random numbers to pick a random string and return it using a function, etc...
Yes, in the questions I have seen that ask for you to fix code; tell you which line of code is broken.
And yes, that is essentially what the questions ask, but I feel learning more about algorithms will help me alot more than just studying specific parts of algorithms.
Try to print values, change and replicate code. It will make things clear, show you what you didn't understand completely and allow you to ask the right questions.
The textbook "Introduction to Algorithms" by Thomas Cormen is the one that was used during my bachelor and master years. A very good book explaining the basics of creating or using existing algorithms. However, I do not think it covers flowcharts designs. All the examples in the book are shown as a pseudo-code.
For designing a good flowchart, you can look up one of the UML books. Those books should have at least a chapter on flowcharts.
Hellothere Craigpd, I'm very familiar with the AS Computing course seeing as I've done AS/A level computing. I don't know if your exam board is any similar to AQA (what I did), but we used these books, and they proved to be very helpful.
I am unsure which exam board the course is on, but it is either WJEC (Welsh Joint Examination Comittee) or AQA..Those seem to be the only boards that ever run around here.