Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
December 1986 5-a-day
Every sheet in December 1986
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st December 1986A mono sound clip has a sample rate of 4000 Hz and lasts 2 seconds. Calculate the total number of samples taken.
- 2nd December 1986State the type of program that is typically stored in ROM.
- 3rd December 1986State one reason a small business might choose to use open source software instead of proprietary (closed source) software.
- 4th December 1986A FOR loop runs: total = 0, FOR i = 1 TO 4, total = total + i, NEXT i. State the value of total after the loop finishes.
- 5th December 1986State the key difference between a procedure and a function.
- 6th December 1986State the typical maximum capacity of a single-layer DVD.
- 7th December 1986Give two reasons why network communication is divided into layers.
- 8th December 1986State what is meant by a syntax error.
- 9th December 1986Give one advantage of a relational database over a flat-file database.
- 10th December 1986What type of utility software reorganises files on a hard disk so fragmented parts are stored closer together?
- 11th December 1986Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
- 12th December 1986Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
- 13th December 1986Convert the hexadecimal number 3F to denary.
- 14th December 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.
- 15th December 1986Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
- 16th December 1986Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
- 17th December 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.
- 18th December 1986State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
- 19th December 1986A 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.
- 20th December 1986State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
- 21st December 1986State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
- 22nd December 1986State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
- 23rd December 1986Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
- 24th December 1986A 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.
- 25th December 1986Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
- 26th December 1986State the layer that IP operates in, and describe its job.
- 27th December 1986Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
- 28th December 1986A table called bookings has fields bookingId, customerName and eventDate. Write an SQL statement that deletes the booking with bookingId 45.
- 29th December 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.
- 30th December 1986Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
- 31st December 1986State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.