Some of the more important things that you should know for the exam include
those items listed below.  These items have been listed in the approximate
order in which they were covered in the course, grouped by chapter/appendix
of the lecture notes.

Chapter 7: Laplace Transform and
Appendix B: Partial Fraction Expansions

  * definition of Laplace transform (forward and inverse)
  * relationship between Laplace transform and Fourier transform
  * computing Laplace transform
  * computing inverse Laplace transform
  * partial fraction expansions (strictly proper vs. not strictly proper,
    repeated pole vs. simple pole)
  * properties of ROC (memorize 7 properties)
    (what if signal is left sided, right sided, two sided, finite duration,
    etc.)
  * properties of Laplace transform
    (linearity, time-domain shifting, Laplace-domain shifting, initial value
    theorem, final value theorem, etc.)
  * characterizing LTI systems with Laplace transform using system function
  * relationship between system properties and system function and/or ROC,
    (e.g., causality, stability, invertibility)
  * finding system function from differential equation representation
  * finding differential equation representation from system function
  * interconnection of LTI systems and effect on system function
  * be able to analyze systems (from block diagrams) using the Laplace
    transform
  * be able to perform stability analysis of systems
  * be able to analyze feedback control systems
  * definition of unilateral Laplace transform
  * how to use the unilateral Laplace transform to solve constant-coefficient
      linear differential equations (with nonzero initial conditions)

Appendix D (MATLAB)

  * basic language syntax
  * arrays (i.e., vectors/matrices), array subscripting
  * arithmetic operators (e.g., +, -, *, /, ^, .*, ./, .^)
  * relational operators (e.g., ==, ~=, <, <=, >, >=)
  * logical operators (e.g., &, |, ~)
  * basic looping constructs (e.g., for, while)
  * basic conditional constructs (e.g., if-then-else)
  * user-defined functions
  * know some very basic functions (e.g., size, length, real, imag, abs,
    angle, plot)
  * element-wise operations
  * how to avoid unnecessary looping and conditional-code execution
    constructs