Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

January 1986 5-a-day

Every sheet in January 1986

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

  1. 1st January 1986State what a foreign key is used for.
  2. 2nd January 1986What type of utility software reorganises files on a hard disk so fragmented parts are stored closer together?
  3. 3rd January 1986Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
  4. 4th January 1986Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
  5. 5th January 1986A pseudocode algorithm is: count <- 0, x <- 10, WHILE x > 0, count <- count + 1, x <- x - 3, ENDWHILE, OUTPUT count. Complete a trace table for x and count, laid out as x | count, then state the value output.
  6. 6th January 1986A 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.
  7. 7th January 1986Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
  8. 8th January 1986Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
  9. 9th January 1986Two 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.
  10. 10th January 1986State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
  11. 11th January 1986Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
  12. 12th January 1986State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
  13. 13th January 1986State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  14. 14th January 1986State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  15. 15th January 1986Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
  16. 16th January 1986State the value returned by LENGTH(word) if word stores the string 'Computer'.
  17. 17th January 1986Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
  18. 18th January 1986Define the term protocol.
  19. 19th January 1986Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  20. 20th January 1986A table called books has fields bookId, title, authorId and copiesAvailable. Write an SQL statement that selects the title of every book with more than 2 copies available.
  21. 21st January 1986Each 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.
  22. 22nd January 1986Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  23. 23rd January 1986State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  24. 24th January 1986State how many different values can be represented using 5 bits, and explain your reasoning.
  25. 25th January 1986Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
  26. 26th January 1986Explain the purpose of a breakpoint.
  27. 27th January 1986Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  28. 28th January 1986Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  29. 29th January 1986Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  30. 30th January 1986Explain why a running maximum should be initialised to the first element of the array rather than to 0.
  31. 31st January 1986An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.