Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
October 1980 5-a-day
Every sheet in October 1980
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st October 1980Each 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.
- 2nd October 1980Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
- 3rd October 1980State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
- 4th October 1980Convert the denary number 39 to an 8-bit binary number, showing your working.
- 5th October 1980Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
- 6th October 1980Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
- 7th October 1980Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
- 8th October 1980Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
- 9th October 1980Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
- 10th October 1980A 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.
- 11th October 1980An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
- 12th October 1980A 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.
- 13th October 1980Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
- 14th October 1980Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
- 15th October 1980Give one specific way this code could be refined without changing what it does: a = 5, b = 3, c = a + b, PRINT c
- 16th October 1980A 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.
- 17th October 1980State the layer that IP operates in, and describe its job.
- 18th October 1980Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
- 19th October 1980A 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.
- 20th October 1980Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
- 21st October 1980An 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.
- 22nd October 1980Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
- 23rd October 1980Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
- 24th October 1980Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
- 25th October 1980Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
- 26th October 1980Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
- 27th October 1980State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
- 28th October 1980State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
- 29th October 1980Trace 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).
- 30th October 1980Define the term 'pixel'.
- 31st October 1980Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.