Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

January 1971 5-a-day

Every sheet in January 1971

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

  1. 1st January 1971State the type of program that is typically stored in ROM.
  2. 2nd January 1971State one reason a small business might choose to use open source software instead of proprietary (closed source) software.
  3. 3rd January 1971A FOR loop runs: total = 0, FOR i = 1 TO 4, total = total + i, NEXT i. State the value of total after the loop finishes.
  4. 4th January 1971Write the pseudocode header and body for a function called isAdult that takes one integer parameter called age and returns True if age is 18 or over.
  5. 5th January 1971State the typical maximum capacity of a single-layer DVD.
  6. 6th January 1971Explain the role of TCP when a large file is downloaded.
  7. 7th January 1971State what is meant by a syntax error.
  8. 8th January 1971State what a foreign key is used for.
  9. 9th January 1971What type of utility software reorganises files on a hard disk so fragmented parts are stored closer together?
  10. 10th January 1971Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
  11. 11th January 1971Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
  12. 12th January 1971A pseudocode algorithm is: count <- 0, x <- 10, WHILE x > 0, count <- count + 1, x <- x - 3, ENDWHILE, OUTPUT count. Complete a trace table for x and count, laid out as x | count, then state the value output.
  13. 13th January 1971A 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.
  14. 14th January 1971Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using a compiler.
  15. 15th January 1971Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
  16. 16th January 1971Two 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.
  17. 17th January 1971State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
  18. 18th January 1971Write a loop in pseudocode that outputs every element of a 1D array named names of length 6.
  19. 19th January 1971State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
  20. 20th January 1971State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  21. 21st January 1971State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  22. 22nd January 1971Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
  23. 23rd January 1971State the value returned by LENGTH(word) if word stores the string 'Computer'.
  24. 24th January 1971Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
  25. 25th January 1971A 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?
  26. 26th January 1971Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  27. 27th January 1971A 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.
  28. 28th January 1971Each 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.
  29. 29th January 1971Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  30. 30th January 1971State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  31. 31st January 1971State how many different values can be represented using 5 bits, and explain your reasoning.