Final Exam


GIS I - Fall 2006 Session


This exam consists of three parts: short answers; an exploratory/essay question; and a "virtual campus" experience. This is an "open book" test - just like real life. You are welcome and encouraged to use all resources available to you including texts (hopefully), lab exercises (why not?), and (obviously) web sites.  This is being distributed to you via the web, but you are required to submit a "hard copy" to me on the due date of December 6th at the beginning of class.  


I Multiple Choice

Circle the letter that best answers the following(20pts total):

1. Using customer locations and street data to generate a package delivery route is an example of what type of spatial analysis?

a) Optimization
b) Measurements
c) Queries and reasoning
d) Transformations

2. Which of the following sampling procedures selects points randomly from a predefined grid?

a) Periodic random sampling
b) Stratified sampling
c) Random sampling
d) Stratified random sampling

3. What is the ecological fallacy?

a) Assuming that ecosystem disruption always has undesirable consequences.
b) Attributing the characteristic of a zone to every location or individual in the zone.
c) Attributing the known characteristics of a spatial object to nearby objects with unknown characteristics.
d) Assuming that human systems can be explained by the same principles as natural systems.

4. All of the following contribute to uncertainty in the measurement of geographic data, except one. Which one?

a) Integration of datasets that were created at different scales
b) The wobbling of the earth's axis
c) Digitizing error
d) The arbitrary nature of zoning schemes

5. Which of the following is an example of a data transformation?

a) Converting raster data to vector data
b) Deriving summary statistics from tabular data
c) Measuring the distance between two points
d) Producing a site suitability map from market data


    II Exploratory Question

    Which one of our Guest Speakers was most interesting to you? In a short essay (maximum one page), tell me why you thought so. What was their topic area, employer, job title, research interest or project objective etc.? Specifically address what GIS tools and/or techniques were discussed in their presentation, and how they were applied to the topic area or project the speaker introduced. Remember, tell me why you personally found the presentation of interest to you. (30 pts).

    III Virtual Campus Exercise

    ESRI maintains a terrific resource for training and support. Their "Virtual Campus" has a numbr of free resources that you can access via the web. Follow the instructions below. Deliverables include a hard copy of your certificate of completion, and/or your exam, plus a brief comment on your experience with this course material/website (60 pts).   

    Virtual Campus. Visit ESRI's Virtual Campus (www.campus.esri.com) and do the following exercise (50 pts):

    a) Create a "global account" for yourself (use any email resource you have available; for privacy reasons, you may want to just use your PSU account and use the campus address)

    b) Select the "FREE" module: Geoprocessing with ArcGIS Desktop. Follow the instructions, download the dataset for the module and run through the exersise.

    c) Take the EXAM - since it is iterative, you should all get 100% - yeah! Print out your diploma (click on the little graduation cap/mortar board icon)

    d) Your feedback is important to us (ESRI and me) and helps us improve our course content. Please take a moment to provide your comments and suggestions. FIll out and PRINT a copy of the evaluation page and submit a copy with your exam certificate.