Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

September 1975 5-a-day

Every sheet in September 1975

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 1975Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
  2. 2nd September 1975Convert the denary number 5 to a 4-bit binary number.
  3. 3rd September 1975A CPU has a clock speed of 4.0 GHz. Calculate how many clock cycles it completes in 2 seconds.
  4. 4th September 1975A simple cipher shifts every letter 2 places forward in the alphabet, wrapping around so Y becomes A and Z becomes B. Encrypt the plaintext CAT using this cipher.
  5. 5th September 1975A 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.
  6. 6th September 1975A mono sound clip has a sample rate of 4000 Hz and lasts 2 seconds. Calculate the total number of samples taken.
  7. 7th September 1975State the type of program that is typically stored in ROM.
  8. 8th September 1975State one reason a small business might choose to use open source software instead of proprietary (closed source) software.
  9. 9th September 1975A FOR loop runs: total = 0, FOR i = 1 TO 4, total = total + i, NEXT i. State the value of total after the loop finishes.
  10. 10th September 1975State the key difference between a procedure and a function.
  11. 11th September 1975State the typical maximum capacity of a single-layer DVD.
  12. 12th September 1975State the layer that IP operates in, and describe its job.
  13. 13th September 1975State what is meant by a syntax error.
  14. 14th September 1975Give one advantage of a relational database over a flat-file database.
  15. 15th September 1975What type of utility software reorganises files on a hard disk so fragmented parts are stored closer together?
  16. 16th September 1975Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
  17. 17th September 1975Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
  18. 18th September 1975Convert the hexadecimal number 3F to denary.
  19. 19th September 1975A 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.
  20. 20th September 1975Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
  21. 21st September 1975Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
  22. 22nd September 1975Two 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.
  23. 23rd September 1975State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
  24. 24th September 1975Trace this algorithm with data = [4, 9, 2, 9, 7] and state the final output. total = 0; count = 0; for i = 0 to 4: if data[i] > 5 then total = total + data[i] and count = count + 1; next i; print(total, count).
  25. 25th September 1975State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
  26. 26th September 1975State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  27. 27th September 1975State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  28. 28th September 1975Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
  29. 29th September 1975A programmer wants any syntax error in their program to be reported before the program starts running at all. State whether a compiler or an interpreter behaves this way, and explain why.
  30. 30th September 1975Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.