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Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

December 2017 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day

Every GCSE Computer Science sheet published in December 2017, with answers. Systems, data representation, networks, algorithms and programming.

← Today's GCSE Computer Science sheet

December 2017

31 sheets · 155 questions · GCSE

December 2017 compilationAll answers

Every sheet in December 2017

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

  1. 1st December 2017A 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.
  2. 2nd December 2017An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  3. 3rd December 2017A 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.
  4. 4th December 2017Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  5. 5th December 2017Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  6. 6th December 2017State the pseudocode operator commonly used to join (concatenate) two strings, then show how it joins 'Rev' and 'ision' to produce 'Revision'.
  7. 7th December 2017A 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.
  8. 8th December 2017State the layer that IP operates in, and describe its job.
  9. 9th December 2017Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  10. 10th December 2017Define the term 'primary key' as used in a database table.
  11. 11th December 2017Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  12. 12th December 2017An array called items contains [12, 45, 7, 30, 19] at indices 0 to 4. Describe how a linear search would locate the value 30, stating the number of comparisons needed.
  13. 13th December 2017Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  14. 14th December 2017Convert the 8-bit binary number 10110100 directly to hexadecimal by splitting it into nibbles.
  15. 15th December 2017Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  16. 16th December 2017Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
  17. 17th December 2017Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  18. 18th December 2017State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  19. 19th December 2017State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
  20. 20th December 2017Trace 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).
  21. 21st December 2017Define the term 'pixel'.
  22. 22nd December 2017Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
  23. 23rd December 2017Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?
  24. 24th December 2017Evaluate the expression 23 DIV 4.
  25. 25th December 2017A 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.
  26. 26th December 2017A 1 TB hard disk drive costs 40 pounds. A 500 GB solid-state drive costs 60 pounds. Calculate the cost per gigabyte of each device, and state which is cheaper per GB. Use 1 TB = 1000 GB.
  27. 27th December 2017Explain the role of TCP when a large file is downloaded.
  28. 28th December 2017A 'quantity' field on a website must only accept whole numbers from 1 to 10. Which validation check identifies that 15 has been entered?
  29. 29th December 2017A 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;
  30. 30th December 2017A row of 8 pixels is WWWBBBWW. Use run-length encoding to encode this row as pairs of (colour, run length).
  31. 31st December 2017An array contains [9, 2, 6], to be sorted using insertion sort. Show the state of the array after each new element has been inserted into its correct position.