Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
February 1985 5-a-day
Every sheet in February 1985
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st February 1985Two 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.
- 2nd February 1985State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
- 3rd February 1985Describe what a nested loop does when it processes a 2D array.
- 4th February 1985State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
- 5th February 1985State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
- 6th February 1985State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
- 7th February 1985Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
- 8th February 1985A function is defined as: FUNCTION addTax(price) RETURN price x 1.2 ENDFUNCTION. Another line of code runs: total <- addTax(20) + addTax(30). Trace both function calls and state the final value of total.
- 9th February 1985Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
- 10th February 1985Give two reasons why network communication is divided into layers.
- 11th February 1985Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
- 12th February 1985A table called staff has fields staffId, name, department and salary, storing these records: staffId | name | department | salary, 1 | Ben | Sales | 24000, 2 | Chloe | IT | 31000, 3 | Dan | Sales | 27000. State which staffId(s) would be returned by: SELECT staffId FROM staff WHERE department = 'Sales' AND salary > 25000;
- 13th February 1985Each 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.
- 14th February 1985Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
- 15th February 1985State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
- 16th February 1985Convert the 8-bit binary number 01011010 to denary.
- 17th February 1985Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
- 18th February 1985Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
- 19th February 1985Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
- 20th February 1985Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
- 21st February 1985Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
- 22nd February 1985A 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.
- 23rd February 1985An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
- 24th February 1985A 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.
- 25th February 1985Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
- 26th February 1985Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
- 27th February 1985Write 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.
- 28th February 1985A 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.