Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

September 1956 5-a-day

Every sheet in September 1956

The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.

  1. 1st September 1956Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
  2. 2nd September 1956Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
  3. 3rd September 1956Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
  4. 4th September 1956A network administrator is connecting 10 computers in a server room. Calculate the number of cables needed for a full mesh topology, and state the number needed for a star topology with one central switch.
  5. 5th September 1956State why a program written in a high level language must be translated.
  6. 6th September 1956Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
  7. 7th September 1956Two CPUs are compared for a task optimised for multiple cores: CPU A has 2 cores at 4.2 GHz; CPU B has 6 cores at 3.0 GHz. Explain which CPU is likely to perform better for this task.
  8. 8th September 1956State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
  9. 9th September 1956Describe what a nested loop does when it processes a 2D array.
  10. 10th September 1956State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
  11. 11th September 1956State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  12. 12th September 1956State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  13. 13th September 1956Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
  14. 14th September 1956State the correct order of the three operations used to read data from a text file.
  15. 15th September 1956Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
  16. 16th September 1956Give two reasons why network communication is divided into layers.
  17. 17th September 1956Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  18. 18th September 1956A table called products has fields productId, name, price and stock. Write an SQL statement that changes the price of the product with productId 7 to 15.99.
  19. 19th September 1956Each pair from the previous question is stored using 2 bytes. Calculate the compression ratio achieved, given the uncompressed row (1 byte per pixel) uses 8 bytes.
  20. 20th September 1956Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  21. 21st September 1956State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  22. 22nd September 1956Convert the denary number 200 to hexadecimal, showing your working.
  23. 23rd September 1956Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
  24. 24th September 1956Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
  25. 25th September 1956Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  26. 26th September 1956Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  27. 27th September 1956Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  28. 28th September 1956A 2D array grid is declared as grid[4][6]. State how many rows and columns it has and how many elements it holds in total.
  29. 29th September 1956An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  30. 30th September 1956A CPU's cache has a hit rate of 80%. During a task the CPU makes 4000 requests for data. Calculate the number of cache hits and cache misses.