Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

February 1995 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day

Every sheet in February 1995

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

  1. 1st February 1995State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  2. 2nd February 1995State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  3. 3rd February 1995Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
  4. 4th February 1995A 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.
  5. 5th February 1995Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
  6. 6th February 1995A user reads the same email on a phone and a tablet, and deleting it on one deletes it on the other. Which protocol is in use and why?
  7. 7th February 1995Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  8. 8th February 1995A 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;
  9. 9th February 1995Each 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.
  10. 10th February 1995Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  11. 11th February 1995State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  12. 12th February 1995Convert the 8-bit binary number 01011010 to denary.
  13. 13th February 1995Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
  14. 14th February 1995Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
  15. 15th February 1995Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  16. 16th February 1995Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  17. 17th February 1995Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  18. 18th February 1995Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
  19. 19th February 1995An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  20. 20th February 1995A 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.
  21. 21st February 1995Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  22. 22nd February 1995Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  23. 23rd February 1995Write 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.
  24. 24th February 1995A 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.
  25. 25th February 1995Define the term protocol.
  26. 26th February 1995Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  27. 27th February 1995State what a foreign key is used for.
  28. 28th February 1995Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.