Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

August 1983 5-a-day

Every sheet in August 1983

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

  1. 1st August 1983Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  2. 2nd August 1983An array named temps holds 12 values. State the index of the first item and the index of the last item.
  3. 3rd August 1983An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  4. 4th August 1983A 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.
  5. 5th August 1983Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  6. 6th August 1983Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  7. 7th August 1983State the key difference between a procedure and a function.
  8. 8th August 1983A 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.
  9. 9th August 1983State the difference between HTTP and HTTPS, and give one situation where HTTPS is essential.
  10. 10th August 1983Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  11. 11th August 1983Give one advantage of a relational database over a flat-file database.
  12. 12th August 1983Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  13. 13th August 1983An 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.
  14. 14th August 1983Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  15. 15th August 1983Convert the hexadecimal number 3F to denary.
  16. 16th August 1983Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  17. 17th August 1983State why a program written in a high level language must be translated.
  18. 18th August 1983Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  19. 19th August 1983State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  20. 20th August 1983State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
  21. 21st August 1983Describe what a nested loop does when it processes a 2D array.
  22. 22nd August 1983Define the term 'pixel'.
  23. 23rd August 1983Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
  24. 24th August 1983Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?
  25. 25th August 1983Evaluate the expression 23 DIV 4.
  26. 26th August 1983A 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.
  27. 27th August 1983A 1 TB hard disk drive costs 40 pounds. A 500 GB solid-state drive costs 60 pounds. Calculate the cost per gigabyte of each device, and state which is cheaper per GB. Use 1 TB = 1000 GB.
  28. 28th August 1983Give two reasons why network communication is divided into layers.
  29. 29th August 1983A 'quantity' field on a website must only accept whole numbers from 1 to 10. Which validation check identifies that 15 has been entered?
  30. 30th August 1983A table called bookings has fields bookingId, customerName and eventDate. Write an SQL statement that deletes the booking with bookingId 45.
  31. 31st August 1983A row of 8 pixels is WWWBBBWW. Use run-length encoding to encode this row as pairs of (colour, run length).