What it is to crack GATE Exam? Part - IV.

1) Mock tests.
-> This should be started 1 month before the exam. Mock tests are very important to analyze how you are performing with respect to time, tension etc. Make sure to do create an exam environment, set time, isolate yourself from day to day disturbances, and take the exam. You can find mock paper @GateForum.com. Analyze your answers with the key, collect all the questions you have answered wrongly, classify them to following categories

1. Don't have a clue of the question.
2. I have read something like this, but not sure what is the answer.
3. I have read this kind of question, but forgot who to do it due to tension.
   
4. Solved the problem, but wrong answer as i have missed some parameters in the question.
5. Solved the problem, marked it wrongly.
6. Out of syllabus/wrong key/partial question (Ignore these questions)
   

Now out of above 4 should be fixed by reading the question completely before jumping to answer it. 5 can be fixed by cross checking every answer if that is the one i want to mark(Question number as well as the choice). (Clarification: Assume it take extra 5 on avg seconds per question, 72*5 = 7 mins out of whole time, which is not very bad if you can save 5-6 questions that come into this category).

For 1,2,3 the reason for not answering is that you are not very confident on those topics, divides all the questions in this bucket into various sub topics. Once you are done with this you, I will bet that you will be surprised to see the wrongly answered questions will go to well defined subtopics in some or the other subjects. Bingo!! You found what need to do now i guess, prepare these topics and Repeat the same with few more mock tests.

2) Last minute preparation.
On the day just before just browse important formulas, constants, TODO stuff, Do a mock in the afternoon, analyze again, ideally if you have done the mock tests prep as i have mentioned in the last question, you will get good score and feel lot confident in the previous night, and Next day is the day you come out the examination center and shout i have made it. Hurray......

All the best for all the Gate Aspirants.......

Satya

What it is to crack GATE Exam? Part - III.

1) What are you going to be tested for in Gate Exam?

-> I have already briefed this in the first post, let me elaborate on this in this post. Gate exam tries to test the "Concepts of Engineering". For computer science, let me present how to look at things with few examples . (I might not explain in deep here, but give a glimpse on how to look at things)

Questions: (each question can have multiple answers)

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a) Computation Theory: You can represent a regular language using

i) Finite Automata

ii) Push down Automata

iii) Linear Bounded Automata

iv) Turing Machine

b) Data Structures: Which of the following is/are true.

i) Binary tree and Binary search tree means the same.

ii) A complete binary tree is not balanced.

iii) Worst Complexity of finding a element is a binary search tree is Theta(log(n)).

c) Computer Architecture: Let's take as an example a system with 512 KB of L2 cache and 64 MB of main memory. Assuming cache is 4 way associative, (memory operations are of word length - typically 32 bytes), It uses LRU for eviction policy.

1) The cache has 512K address lines. (True/False)

2) Assuming the two consecutive memory requests are random, what is the probability that the second request will evict the data of the first request from the cache is (<0.5>0.5 or =0.5).

Answers:

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a) If your answer is (i), wow great you are right, but since there can be multiple answers as i said, all (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) are correct. Can you answer why?

So there are four types of languages as you might have read in your books.

Type 1: Unrestricted grammar, some formulae, can be represented using turing machine,

Type 2: and so on.

But we should know is that as we go to higher types they get more and more restricted, ie type 2 languages are subset of type 1, type 3 is subset of type 2, so on.

That means, type 4 grammar is subset of all other types, which is type 4 can be represented using any automaton that is used for representing type 1, type 2, type 3 and type 4. Hence the answer.

b) Lets just about understanding the the data structure means.

i) False. Refer to definitions.

ii) False. A complete binary tree is a balanced tree, Again refer to definitions.

iii) False. Average case complexity is Theta(log(n)), Worst case complexity is O(n). and best case complexity Omega(1). Again if you understand the terms Theta, Big O, Omega, then you can appreciate this question, and only then you will understand why.

c) i) False, since the size of each cache line is word length as that is unit of memory operation, it can't fetch data in smaller sizes, so number of cache lines will be 512K/32 = 16K cache lines.

Refer this link to understand what is 4 way associative memory.

ii) Answer is 0. Since in a four way associative memory, that uses LRU, there still 3 other cache lines that the second request can go to. If if the other 3 cache lines are filled, it will evict of these 3 as, it is LRU policy.

(You can understand these explanation only once you understand the 3 types of caches)

I know that i have not 100% clearly explained the answers, i want you to explore it. I have given a glimpse of how think, and approach.

So if you start reasoning while preparing for the Gate exam, I am sure u have mastered the technical part of cracking the gate exam. Last part is how to allocate time and prepare for the exam, is in part IV

What it is to crack GATE Exam? Part - II.

1) How much time i should dedicate in-order to crack GATE?

-> GATE syllabus covers all the subjects one have learnt during the 4 years of engineering(Includes only revelant subjects to the specific department that are covered in 1st year though). So if you are conceptual learner(kind 4) as described in the previous post, few months of serious preperation before the exam is enough for cracking Gate Exam. For others it varies according to how far are away from the being conceptual learner.

2)Is Coaching Classes necessary for Gate Exam?

->Most of the people think, coaching classes are necessary to crack Gate exam, but its not true. Only thing coaching classes help is they consolidate all the information one required for cracking the Gate exam and mock tests, but just reading the formula's and solving the problems at the end of the chapters will have no effect until you understand the solutions for the problems and their application. As Gate questions won't get repeated, only way is to understand the concepts for all the subjects. Gate has different weightages for different subjects, so you have to check it before starting your preparation for Gate exam. 3-4 mock tests in the last week before the Gate exam, will surely help in boosting your score.

3) What is the rough rank i should get in order to get a good college?

-> This information is regarding CS, If you are planning to get into IISC or IIT's you need a rank in the range 1-300 depending on percentage of people appeared for Gate really interested in doing higher studies. Getting into an IIT and completing your Masters with good percentage will assure you a job with a salary of 7-15 lpa(Lakhs per annum). Next best are NIT's, a rank around 400-700 will assure seat in one of the top NIT's. The job prospects in hear depends on the NIT though, You can expect salary range of 4-10 lpa(depending on the institute). For more information about the cut off, previous years trends, etc visit one of the following websites.

• gateforum.com
• onestopgate.com
• gatementor.com

4) How much impact does getting into nice college on my career?

-> As you can clearly guess answer to this question is yes it has impact and it varies from IIT's to NIT's, but it all depends on you. If you have chosen a good research project, and professor who can guide you well, IIT or NIT or IISC doesn't matter much. But the chances for doing so is much easier in IIT's than in NIT's. You can find the ranking of various college using Google Search. An old ranking order can be found here.

- Satyanarayana Manyam.

What it is to crack GATE Exam? Part - I.

1) How difficult it is to crack Gate Exam?
-> Gate is like any other multiple choice technical examination like AIEEE, EAMCET etc, only difference is it concentrates on one branch of study like Computers, Electronics, Mechanical, Civil etc. The main difficultly of this exam is wrong perception of what exactly 'Gate examination' tests for? It tests your understanding of core engineering subjects you have learnt, not the amount of content you have mugged, unlike other exams. I will eloborate on this in my third post, for now let's move on with a small example.

What is the complexity of quick sort?

1. If your answer for the above question is O(nlogn). Well you are good in mugging(Nothing else). (Note: Mugging is not something bad, I am just referring to 'blind understanding of the subject' as mugging)
   
2. If your answer is worst case complexity O(n^2), average case is O(nlogn) and best case is so and so. Well you have good knowledge on understanding the question, and answered the question, i rate you as mugger, but intelligent mugger.
3. If your answer is above, and u know why is it that complexity. Well then you are hard working guy, trying to learn very thing from books and have a good bookish knowledge.
4. Finally If you know what is the answer, why is that so, why is it Big O(), rather than Theta() or Omega(), what exactly these three things mean, when to use what notation. There you go, Gate exam is a cake walk for you.

So your answer to above question explains how difficult it is for you to crack gate exam. If your answer is

1. U have a long way to go, concentrate more on understanding rather than answering the question.
2. U have the right attitude for understanding, you have to just question "why" for every question u answer, :)
3. U are almost at the edge of success, give a bit more thought on "why X is X but not Y?".
4. U are perfect and have enough talent for cracking Gate Exam.

But this is not all, you need 3 other things along with understanding of the subject, for you to be topper in the Gate.

• Speed, amount of time for u to respond for the question.
• Mental Peace, Or "Not having tension" as you can call it. This is one thing, most talented people lack at important situation of life.(I will write a post on it later).
• Luck, Or you can call it "Law of Attraction", as documented by BBC.

Part - II, click here.

- Satyanarayana Manyam

What it is to crack GATE Exam? Overview.

So I am just googling my name and found my GATE credentials posted in www.gatementor.com, which made me think why can't post my views on GATE Examination(though it relevant only for CSE, IT Gate aspirants). First of all i like to inform my GATE ranks, for you to have reasonable credebility of what i am posting.
GATE 2007 CS - AIR 17.
GATE 2008 CS - AIR 4(Percentile 99.98).

One other reason of this post can be attributed to recession which made lot students to go for higher studies as getting a job in current situation(summer 2009) is very hard. Please bare with grammatical mistakes if any :)
I am posting my detailed views on few topics.
PART - I :

1. How difficult it is to crack Gate Exam?

PART - II:

1. How much time i should dedicate in-order to crack GATE?
2. What is the rough rank i should get in order to get a good college?
3. How much impact does getting into nice college will it have on my career?

PART - III:

1. What are you going to be tested for in Gate Exam?(If u can grasp this 100% and follow it u can see ur name in the Gate toppers list).

PART - IV

1. Mock tests.
2. Last minute preparation.
   

- Satyanarayana Manyam

Few random sites that hit upon recently.

siliconindia.com - the humour section of this website is hilarious, i can't stop laughing over the jokes.

robozzle.com - Robot programming website, very addictive, interesting and brain power consuming.

mashable.com - techie news portal, very intersting articles.

bumptop.com - Nice Destop GUI, but needs more functionality for a person to stick to it.

photofunia.com - Make a fool of yourself (and your friends).

Android, the future of the mobile world.

Finally i bought T mobile G1, a phone powered by Android Operating system from Google. The Phone is great because it works on Android Operating System. The power comes to android as it is open source mobile operating system. so i have the power in my hand to customize a phone however i want if i can a techie. Ever for other its good because there will like minded techies who will develop the Customizations and normal people can use them. I will post a review on the it shortly, but before that there is some thing important to know about the phone.
In india phone is not released yet, Either u have buy a unlocked developer version or a contract free phone and unlock it. There are few things to know before u unlock the G1 in the later case.

• To unlock g1 visit www.unlock-tmobileg1.com, u have to pay 24$ via paypal to get the unlock code.
• To unlock the phone u need a sim card with a data plan enabled on it.
• U need to know the MNC MCC codes for ur carrier( click here for the codes ).
• Should know the APN setting for ur carrier.

The above thing are very important. To know about various data plans call ur customer care.
Issues i have faced during the process.
I am using airtel karnataka as my service provider with a post paid connection. Here are various available data plans settings

Plan 1

Rs.399 per month
100 MB Free Usage

Rs.5 per extra MB

Plan 2

Rs.599 per month
1GB Free Usage

Rs.3 per extra MB

Plan 3

Rs. 799 per month
1.5 GB Free Usage

Rs.3 per extra MB

Plan 4

Rs 140 per week, Unlimited. Better go for this one.

Connection settings

APN: airtelgprs.com

MNC: 45

MCC: 404

Will update more very shortly. The is very less information online till noe on this topic, i will sure to update info as soon as possible. In case of any querys leave a comment.