1Foundations & algorithms

• 1.1Numeric representation & information theory

  Covers binary and hexadecimal representation inside a computer and base conversion, complement notation for negative numbers, floating-point numbers for real values and the errors they introduce (rounding, cancellation, loss of trailing digits), and the basics of information content and encoding.

• 1.2Logic & automata

  Covers logical operations (AND/OR/NOT, etc.) and De Morgan's laws, the logic circuits that physically implement them, BNF for rigorously defining the syntax of programming languages and protocols, regular expressions for describing string patterns, and finite automata for modeling system behavior via state transitions.

• 1.3Data structures

  Covers arrays and lists for organizing data a program works with, the last-in-first-out stack (LIFO), the first-in-first-out queue (FIFO), tree structures (binary trees) for hierarchy, hashing for fast lookup, and graphs for representing network-like relationships.

• 1.4Algorithms & complexity

  Covers search for finding target data (linear search, binary search), sorting to order data (bubble sort, quicksort, merge sort), recursion where a routine calls itself, and Big-O notation (O(n), O(log n), O(n^2)) for expressing algorithm efficiency as a function of input size.

• 1.5Pseudocode & programming

  Covers how to read the IPA pseudocode used in Exam B of the FE exam: procedure declarations, variables and assignment (<-), conditional branching (if / elseif / else / endif), loops (for / while), array indexing, and how to trace code—manually executing it line by line to follow how values change.

• 1.6Programming paradigms & languages

  Covers the three major paradigms—procedural programming (describing a sequence of steps), object-oriented programming (encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism), and functional programming (avoiding side effects)—along with representative languages (Python, Java, C, R, Go), the markup and data-description formats used for data exchange (HTML, XML, JSON), and the roles of an API and a library.