CLAD sample exam 1

[ThHagel]

I'm sorry Dennis but I have to comment your post:

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 It is simply not true that the iteration counter is equal to the number of fully executed loop cycles.

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I'm not sure why the most of you try to explain things with an for-loop with a finit number of cycles. And further I do not understand why most of you consider the increment terminals value after the loop terminated (this is not the moment when the iteration terminal returns it's value, it does it at the beginning of each loop cycle).

Of course your style of viewing things leads to answer c, but where from did you get the information that this specific case is what they are asking for.

The question is not "what is the iteration terminals last value after a loop finished execution?" than it's N-1, yes. But only then.

I provided you a simple VI that doesn't focus on the loops type or total iterations but on each returned value of the iteration terminal. To open your minds for an alternative way of viewing things, I added the questions on the front panel. No one answered yet.

So Dennis, if you want I add an additional comparison and a boolean indicator to show that the value returned by the iteration counter is equal to the number of fully executed loop cycles.

I didn't know what to expect when I started this thread. I'm sorry if some of you ar allready tiered of it. That was not my intention. Thanks for all your input, it was interesting to read all your opinions.

If some of you wan't to check the attached VI (I added that boolean indicator), feel free to comment (in general).

Greetings,

Thomas

[RavensFan]

You are arguing semantics.

You are saying that "has executed" means the same thing as "has fully executed".  It doesn't.  The cycle you are in has executed, it just may not have completed its execution yet.  In your VI, the answer to question 2 is C.

The answer to question 1 just confuses the issue because your "minutes" elapsed is very segmented.  Your number shows 0 even if 59 seconds have elasped.  So have 0 minutes elaspsed? No.  .983333 minutes have elasped.

[NIquist]

LastTry2.vi.    Good one!

I really don't think most of us are arguing as to whether or not the question is ambiguous and/or poorly phrased.  It is.  If you search these forums for CLAD you'll find numerous similar threads.  No one should be expected to be a mind read to pass a test but sometimes that's just the way it goes.

I call this the "Family Feud Effect".  In this case instead of trying to determine the most popular answers given by a studio audience we get to try to figure out what a NI LabVIEW teacher expects of us.  Since they all have lots of LabVIEW experience they may forget that something "obvious" to them might confuse new users (which, ironically, are the target audience of this test).  They do respond to these kind of complaints though so don't think your comments are falling on deaf ears. 

[ThHagel]

Hi Ravens Fan,

I still want to add some comments (I'm a hopeless case, I know):

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The answer to question 1 just confuses the issue because your "minutes" elapsed is very segmented.  Your number shows 0 even if 59 seconds have elasped.  So have 0 minutes elaspsed? No.  .983333 minutes have elasped.

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Use your imagination: the wait operation is just an example, a snippet of code, that can be replaced by really any other code that doesn't run forever. For example virtually replace it with a SubVI that scans this thread and returns the new posts that have been detected (here is one :-). In this case we would count posts not (completed) minutes.

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You are arguing semantics.

You are saying that "has executed" means the same thing as "has fully executed".  It doesn't.  The cycle you are in has executed, it just may not have completed its execution yet.  In your VI, the answer to question 2 is C.

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Yes I agree, I'm arguing about semantics!

Let me highlight something that I just recognized and that I think is interesting:

The words "has executed" are used in the sample exam question which I interpret as "has fully executed".

I claim that everyone who tried to prove that c is the right answer does the same thing! Why? Each approach to explain things was based on a loop that already stopped executing, so the focus was always on N fully executed loop cycles.

So we are talking about the same thing "fully executed loop cycles". The only difference is that I interpret the iteration terminals value for the moment it get's returned (at the beginning of each loop cycle), which leads to answer a.

I recognized that my issue here is confusing, iritating or even annoying (especially since I do not want to focus on stopped loops :-). Maybe I'm confused too, even though I think I have a well-defined position? Who knows.

I wonder if answer c could be applied to loops working in parallel mode. With the available answers it would only make sense to focus on a finished loop in that case, but could we tell for sure that the iteration terminals last value is the highest?

By the way, if we include the new parallel execution feature into this discussion, we can see clear what the iteration terminal really delivers: nothing else than a unique index for each loop cycle. Unfortunately the exam question forces us to convert/reinterpret that index value, which obviously can be done in different ways.

I agree with everyone who says the exam question is poorly phrased!

Greetings to everyone,

Thomas 

[ST5]

100% agree to that.

Ni did a good job choosing the kind of questions.

Asking questions the right way is a science too.

Preventing ambiguity has to do with communication and psychology.

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Message Edited by ST5 on 03-29-2010 10:30 AM