PASSED! Jeanne’s Experience Taking the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Generative AI Professional

Posted on by
Reply

Today I took the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2025 Generative AI Professional certification and passed with a score of 86%. Passing is 68%. This roughly the score I got on the Foundations exam. Which isn’t surprising. I tend to make the same amount of “careless mistakes” on exams in general with this sort of thing. Even in elementary school. I’d know the material, and write down the wrong answer. Or misread a question.

It’s a 90 minute exam with 50 questions. This is 30 minutes and 10 questions more than the foundations exam. It took me 22 minutes for this exam (and about 10 minutes for the foundation). For both each question was pick one of four multiple choice questions. In many questions one or two were clear distractors. Why did this take twice as long? More questions was part of it. And another was this one had you reading code for some of the questions. Not a lot of code; just 2-6 lines or so. But that takes longer than reading words. Which is probably why the Java 21 cert was a problem with time. That was reading A LOT of code.

Why I took this certification

Oracle is doing a race to certification, where you can take a number of free certifications between now and Halloween. Unlike the Vector cert, which I took solely because it was free, this one I took both because it was free and to learn something. (same for foundations) And I did. Some was new to me and some I used to know and forgot. I especially appreciated learning/reviewing vocabulary and concepts.

What I did:

  • Watched videos and did skills checks from the free course. This was interesting. The skills check questions cover a good amount of the exam materials. I watched it on 2x speed. I also skipped most of the lab videos. I skipped the demos and focused on the concepts because I wasn’t interested in the Oracle Cloud specifics. I did this over two days. There is some repetition in the videos. For example, in context and k shot prompting was in modules 2 and 3. Same slides; different instructor.
  • Watched the video about preparing for the exam. It came with 4 practice questions which were similar to the exam.
  • Did practice exam. This was 50 questions. matching the real exam. The first time thru I got a 68%, which is exactly passing. (I didn’t review my notes at all) It was useful for knowing what I needed to remember. I reviewed 15 answers and then took it again getting an 84%. (I didn’t review them all because I accidentally closed the browser tab.

The exam

All the questions were single answer multiple choice. Like the Vector exam, you had to sign up for a slot in advance. Scheduling wasn’t bad though. I had a choice of any time during the 24 hours of Monday. (and a few 10:30pm or later Sunday night but I am a morning person)

Also, like the Vector exam, i took a picture and showed the computer my id. Then started.

I wrote a separate blog post about the exam engine. I had a few differences form that time though:

  • I had to download software to my machine for Proctorio (“Secure Companion App” and not just the browser plugin this time. I was sure to delete it right after.
  • I had to close my Terminal and Slack this time. While I certainly didn’t use them last time, I didn’t close them. (I don’t have alerts on Slack so it didn’t affect e)
  • Two of the questions had a multiline sentence as answer options that was behind the floating menu bar on the right. The first time, I dragged it was fine. The second time, I accidentally clicked the picture of me (my video) instead of the grab bar. This turned off my video. I clicked to turn it back on immediately and the proctor didn’t comment. There was nowhere good to put the bar though where it didn’t cover something on one question so I moved it a few times.

After the exam

You get a score report on the screen right after submitting and an email right away with the same score. It took a little under an hour to get the second email saying my certview was updated. While Oacle products were used as examples a lot, you only had to actually know about them for a few questions.

What I found most interesting

I like that the questions were a mix on this exam. Some were pure definitions. Some were scenarios where you had to identify a term or algorithm from the description. Some were code where you had to answer a question about it. (luckily the Python code was clear because remember I didn’t watch any of the demos or do the lab).

I also found it interesting how the exams are related. Some of the concepts from other exams were on this one.

How to Study

The learning path is sufficient to take the exam if you go through it carefully. And just like the other AI certs, pay lots of attention ot the sample questions and practice exams! There are only so many ways you can ask certain topics.

PASSED! Jeanne’s Experience Taking the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2025 AI Foundations Associate

Posted on by
Reply

Today I took the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Foundations Associate certification and passed with a score of 88%. Passing is 65%.

It’s a 60 minute exam with 40 questions. It look me way less than that (about 10 minutes). Each question is pick one of four multiple choice questions. In many questions one or two were clear distractors.

Why I took this certification

Oracle is doing a race to certification, where you can take a number of free certifications between now and Halloween. Unlike the Vector cert, which I took solely because it was free, this one I took both because it was free and to learn something. And I did. Some was new to me and some I used to know and forgot/

What I did:

  • Watched videos and did skills checks from the free course. This was interesting. The skills check questions cover a good amount of the exam materials. I watched it on 2x speed. I also skipped most of the lab videos. I skipped a lot of the demos and focused on the concepts.
  • Watched the video about preparing for the exam. It came with 7 practice questions which were useful for getting a feel for what to expect.
  • Did practice exam. This was 40 questions in 60 minutes. it matched the real exam. The first time thru I got a 55%. (I didn’t review my notes at all) It was useful for knowing what I needed to remember. I took it immediately again and got a 93% which was more reflective of my real exam score.

The exam

All the questions were single answer multiple choice. Unlike the Vector exam, you didn’t have to sign up for a slot in advance. It didn’t seem proctored although hard to be sure. You also get 15 attempts at passing. I only used one but it seems like the goal is for people to pass and not to have a stringent test.

You get two free exam attempts with the promo and this exam didn’t use either of them. Looks like it is always free

I wrote a separate blog post about the exam engine. The battery indicator wasn’t there so maybe that was about the proctor’s machine?

After the exam

You get a score report on the screen right after submitting and an email right away with the same score. It took a little under an hour to get the second email saying my certview was updated.

What I found most interesting

The refresher on terms was good for me. The types of neural networks and when you use each was mostly new to me and interesting. There were good examples throughout. I also enjoyed seeing the capabilities of some of the Oracle products at a high level.

How to Study

The learning path is sufficient to take the exam if you go through it more carefully.

NYC Bus Redesign and a Coding Problem

Posted on by
1

NYC is updating the MTA (metropolitan transit authority) bus system this summer with one set of changes taking effect today and another taking effect in about two months. How it went from my point of view:

The plan

There were four plans. Lesson: don’t call something the final plan or you have run out of names. My friends and I were wondering what they would call the real final plan “Final final”? They went with “Final Plan Addendum”. I will say the plan was well socialized and communicated.

  • 2019-2021: Draft Plan
  • March 2022: New Draft Plan released
  • December 2023: Proposed Final Plan released
  • December 2024: Proposed Final Plan Addendum released
  • January 2025: MTA Board approved the Proposed Final Plan Addendum

Leading up

For the most part, the MTA was good with signage. Signs for the new bus routes went up early. Existing stops had yellow signs saying if the stop would cease to be a bus stop or if the route was changing. In my neighborhood, there was a campaign a few weeks back in person to make sure people knew.

First day: bus stops

On one of the routes near me, two bus stops with bus shelters are no longer bus stops. One of them is no longer on the bus route. The other is, but not a bus stop. Drivers were good about letting people get on there and letting them know the bus stop moved.

The new bus stop in between these two stops had cars parked there overnight. (There was a sign that said no parking starting Sunday but it was hard to see.) That cleared up over the course of the day. Now, there’s a nice line of people waiting at the bus stop.

It’ll be interesting to see when the MTA takes down the old misleading bus shelters and if they build on at the new one. (I can see the new bus stop from my window so I’m particularly interested in what happens there.)

A new bus route

There’s a new bus route that goes limited stop from 1 or 2 blocks from my apartment to a number of areas that I go. (Whoo hoo! I don’t have to transfer buses to go there anymore. This is going to be great in the winter.)

Wait: did I say 1 *or* 2 blocks. Why yes, I did. The last stop of the new bus route is across the street from my apartment. The first step is … somewhere. According to the MTA it is a t a street corner two blocks away. The apartment building as a sidewalk tent (a type of scaffolding) and there doesn’t appear to be a bus stop there. One bus driver thinks the new bus is sharing a stop with another but even though there isn’t a sign for it there. It’s also possible it loads at the last stop.

This bus only runs every half hour on weekends and I wasn’t prepared to just miss it by waiting at the wrong place. The second stop is only a few blocks away so I waited there. I was fourth on line suggesting I was not the only one with that confusion. The bus came into the second stop with about a dozen people on it. They weren’t sure where the first stop was supposed to be nor was the driver.

I took this same bus home. Where the driver got confused and couldn’t find the last stop. While it is clearly marked, it is the break area for that bus and another one. The other bus was in front of the sign so the driver couldn’t see the stop and pulled onto a side street to look for the non-existent first stop. Which he couldn’t find either.

This feels like growing pains though. Overall, I was happy with the rollout.

Coding bug

The MTA runs a website where you can see when the bus is coming with real time info. It is mostly correct. And then every once in a while you get something like the following. (I’ve seen this problem before so it’s not related to the redesign.

One bus was “3 minutes” away. and just over a mile away. (This is a street where you can go 25 miles per hour and has a lot of lights. You can’t go a mile in 3 minutes unless you catch every light and nobody wants to get on or off the bus.) I find the distance to be more accurate than the time for routes in progress. Regardless, it’s close and clearly worth heading to the bus stop.

The next bus is about 30 minutes later and the scheduled to depart terminal time is right at 2:30. The depart terminal for the next one is also right at 3pm. However, if you’ve mastered elementary school math, you might notice that a bus that leaves 30 minutes later is not arriving 3 minutes later (35-32).

The distance away is also interesting. The whole route is a little over 7 miles. And neither bus has left the terminals. Puzzling me where the number of miles away came from.