Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

April 1978 5-a-day

Every sheet in April 1978

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

  1. 1st April 1978Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  2. 2nd April 1978A table called bookings has fields bookingId, customerName and eventDate. Write an SQL statement that deletes the booking with bookingId 45.
  3. 3rd April 1978Each 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 April 1978Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  5. 5th April 1978State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  6. 6th April 1978Convert the denary number 39 to an 8-bit binary number, showing your working.
  7. 7th April 1978Calculate 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 April 1978Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
  9. 9th April 1978Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  10. 10th April 1978Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  11. 11th April 1978Which 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 April 1978Trace 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).
  13. 13th April 1978An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  14. 14th April 1978A 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 April 1978Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  16. 16th April 1978Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  17. 17th April 1978Give one specific way this code could be refined without changing what it does: a = 5, b = 3, c = a + b, PRINT c
  18. 18th April 1978A 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 April 1978Explain the role of TCP when a large file is downloaded.
  20. 20th April 1978Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  21. 21st April 1978A table called members has fields memberId, firstName, lastName and joinYear. Write an SQL statement that adds a new record with memberId 12, firstName 'Priya', lastName 'Shah' and joinYear 2026.
  22. 22nd April 1978Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  23. 23rd April 1978An 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 April 1978Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  25. 25th April 1978Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
  26. 26th April 1978Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  27. 27th April 1978Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using a compiler.
  28. 28th April 1978Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  29. 29th April 1978State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  30. 30th April 1978State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.