Importance of Math class in SCJP 5.0

[Abdul Rehman]

Hi ranchers.
I am preparing for the SCJP 5.0 exam. Many people would have already passed this exam, so, I need their help! In the objectives for the 310-055 exam, the class Math is not mentioned, albeit the classes of java.lang are mentioned as a whole. So, I would like to know as to how much importance is given to the Math class in the 5.0 exam? How much should I prepare myself?

Actually, I don't have any trouble in understanding the various methods & memorizing their prototypes. But, the special cases mentioned in the documentation are brain-storming and overwhelming! There are so many special cases for just the method pow(). So, it is really difficult to memorize all the stuff related with the methods.

Hope, the SCJPs will help & guide me in this issue.

Best regards,
Abdul Rehman.

[Valentin Mone]

Hi Abdul,
My opinion is that you don't have to worry so much about Math class. As one who took scjp 5.0 exam, i don't remember to have seen questions related to this, and if they are they won't require you to know all the api for this class, but only the most used (random for example). I think you should focus more on collection/generics, IO, OOP.... this will save your but, and not Math class.

Cheers,
Valentin

[prashanth kumar]

As far as i know the only place where Math class may appear is with respect to static imports.

Cheers
Prashanth

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

The times you see the math class usually deals with calling its methods. If you know that the Math class is a static class, and the methods are called in a static manner,and not through and instance, you should be fine.

-Cameron McKenzie

[Abdul Rehman]

A lot of thanks to all of you for guiding me!!!

I just wanted to ask another thing that will I be allowed to take a calculator into the cubicle where I will take the exam? If no, can we use Windows' calculator application or will we have to do all the calculations manually?

[Juhi Gupta]

Originally posted by Abdul Rehman:
A lot of thanks to all of you for guiding me!!!

I just wanted to ask another thing that will I be allowed to take a calculator into the cubicle where I will take the exam? If no, can we use Windows' calculator application or will we have to do all the calculations manually?

I don't think so that calculations will be so lengthy, that you may need to use Calculator.

And other calculations will be more likely Bitwise operators. So that you need to do manually, there is no calculator for that type of operations.

[Rohitt Vermaa]

you wont be allowed to take calculator. And i think windows calculator cannot be accessed. But anyway you wont need that at all.
[ November 15, 2006: Message edited by: Rohitt Vermaa ]

[Abdul Rehman]

Thanks for the info. Doing bitwise operations manually will not be that difficult.
But, I hope that the exam doesn't contain questions about the loss of precision in floating-point operations. For example, the following code:-

class Test {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      int big = 1234567890;
      float approx = big;
      System.out.println(big - (int)approx);
   }
}

produces the output:

-46

So, what are your suggestions for such questions? How do I know that a loss of precision will occur or not, & how much loss?
How can we convert a floating-point number into its binary IEEE 754 representation?

Thanks.

[Bert Bates]

You won't have to do any complex math on the 5.0 - not even bit shifting. There was a little of that on the 1.4, but it's gone now.

Focus on what the Sun objectives say - they give you an almost perfect view of what's on the exam!

Most people find that if they focus their studies on the tricky objectives that are stated they do well. So, make sure that you REALLY understand:

- threads
- garbage collection
- inner classes
- access
- generics
- boxing
- the listed APIs
- classpaths

hth,

Bert

[Abdul Rehman]

Thank you Sir, for taking out your time & giving me the tips. I am sure, they will be very helpful for preparing me for the SCJP 5 exam.