Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

May 1995 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day

Every sheet in May 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 May 1995Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
  2. 2nd May 1995Convert the denary number 5 to a 4-bit binary number.
  3. 3rd May 1995A CPU has a clock speed of 4.0 GHz. Calculate how many clock cycles it completes in 2 seconds.
  4. 4th May 1995A simple cipher shifts every letter 2 places forward in the alphabet, wrapping around so Y becomes A and Z becomes B. Encrypt the plaintext CAT using this cipher.
  5. 5th May 1995A 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.
  6. 6th May 1995A mono sound clip has a sample rate of 4000 Hz and lasts 2 seconds. Calculate the total number of samples taken.
  7. 7th May 1995State the type of program that is typically stored in ROM.
  8. 8th May 1995State one reason a small business might choose to use open source software instead of proprietary (closed source) software.
  9. 9th May 1995A FOR loop runs: total = 0, FOR i = 1 TO 4, total = total + i, NEXT i. State the value of total after the loop finishes.
  10. 10th May 1995Give one specific way this code could be refined without changing what it does: a = 5, b = 3, c = a + b, PRINT c
  11. 11th May 1995State the typical maximum capacity of a single-layer DVD.
  12. 12th May 1995State the layer that IP operates in, and describe its job.
  13. 13th May 1995State what is meant by a syntax error.
  14. 14th May 1995A table called members has fields memberId, firstName, lastName and joinYear. Write an SQL statement that adds a new record with memberId 12, firstName 'Priya', lastName 'Shah' and joinYear 2026.
  15. 15th May 1995What type of utility software reorganises files on a hard disk so fragmented parts are stored closer together?
  16. 16th May 1995Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
  17. 17th May 1995Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
  18. 18th May 1995Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
  19. 19th May 1995A 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.
  20. 20th May 1995Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
  21. 21st May 1995Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
  22. 22nd May 1995Two 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.
  23. 23rd May 1995State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
  24. 24th May 1995Trace this algorithm with data = [4, 9, 2, 9, 7] and state the final output. total = 0; count = 0; for i = 0 to 4: if data[i] > 5 then total = total + data[i] and count = count + 1; next i; print(total, count).
  25. 25th May 1995State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
  26. 26th May 1995State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  27. 27th May 1995State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  28. 28th May 1995Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
  29. 29th May 1995State the correct order of the three operations used to read data from a text file.
  30. 30th May 1995Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
  31. 31st May 1995Explain the role of TCP when a large file is downloaded.