Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

December 1957 5-a-day

Every sheet in December 1957

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

  1. 1st December 1957Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
  2. 2nd December 1957Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
  3. 3rd December 1957Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
  4. 4th December 1957A 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 December 1957Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using a compiler.
  6. 6th December 1957Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
  7. 7th December 1957Two 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 December 1957State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
  9. 9th December 1957Write a loop in pseudocode that outputs every element of a 1D array named names of length 6.
  10. 10th December 1957State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
  11. 11th December 1957State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  12. 12th December 1957State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  13. 13th December 1957Write 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 December 1957State the correct order of the three operations used to read data from a text file.
  15. 15th December 1957Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
  16. 16th December 1957A user reads the same email on a phone and a tablet, and deleting it on one deletes it on the other. Which protocol is in use and why?
  17. 17th December 1957Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  18. 18th December 1957A 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 December 1957Each 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 December 1957Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  21. 21st December 1957State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  22. 22nd December 1957Convert the denary number 200 to hexadecimal, showing your working.
  23. 23rd December 1957Calculate 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 December 1957Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
  25. 25th December 1957Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  26. 26th December 1957Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  27. 27th December 1957Which 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 December 1957Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
  29. 29th December 1957An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  30. 30th December 1957A 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.
  31. 31st December 1957Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.