Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

May 1962 5-a-day

Every sheet in May 1962

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

  1. 1st May 1962Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  2. 2nd May 1962A table called books has fields bookId, title, authorId and copiesAvailable. Write an SQL statement that selects the title of every book with more than 2 copies available.
  3. 3rd May 1962Each 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.
  4. 4th May 1962Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  5. 5th May 1962State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  6. 6th May 1962State how many different values can be represented using 5 bits, and explain your reasoning.
  7. 7th May 1962Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
  8. 8th May 1962Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
  9. 9th May 1962Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  10. 10th May 1962Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  11. 11th May 1962Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  12. 12th May 1962Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
  13. 13th May 1962An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  14. 14th May 1962A 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.
  15. 15th May 1962Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  16. 16th May 1962Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  17. 17th May 1962State the key difference between a procedure and a function.
  18. 18th May 1962A company backs up its files onto magnetic tape cartridges, each with a capacity of 3 TB. The company needs to back up 20 TB of data. Calculate the minimum number of cartridges needed.
  19. 19th May 1962Define the term protocol.
  20. 20th May 1962Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  21. 21st May 1962Give one advantage of a relational database over a flat-file database.
  22. 22nd May 1962Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  23. 23rd May 1962An array called items contains [12, 45, 7, 30, 19] at indices 0 to 4. Describe how a linear search would locate the value 30, stating the number of comparisons needed.
  24. 24th May 1962Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  25. 25th May 1962Convert the hexadecimal number 3F to denary.
  26. 26th May 1962Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  27. 27th May 1962Explain the purpose of a breakpoint.
  28. 28th May 1962Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  29. 29th May 1962State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  30. 30th May 1962State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
  31. 31st May 1962Explain why a running maximum should be initialised to the first element of the array rather than to 0.