Big Idea 3 (30-35%)

Question 1

variable

Answer 1

an abstraction inside a program
that can hold a value.

Question 2

list

Answer 2

an ordered sequence of elements
EX: [value1, value2, value3, …]

Question 3

element

Answer 3

an individual value in a list that is
assigned a unique index.

Question 4

index

Answer 4

a common method for referencing
the elements in a list or string using natural
numbers.

Question 5

string

Answer 5

is an ordered sequence of characters. EX:
“Hello World” is a string of characters.

Question 6

algorithm

Answer 6

a finite set of instructions that
accomplish a specific task.

Question 7

sequencing

Answer 7

the application of each step of
an algorithm in the order in which the code
statements are given.

Question 8

code statement

Answer 8

a part of program code
that expresses an action to be carried out.

Question 9

expression

Answer 9

consist of a value, a variable,
an operator, or a procedure call that returns a
value.

Question 10

string concatenation

Answer 10

joins together two or
more strings end-to-end to make a new string

Question 11

substring

Answer 11

part of an existing string.

Question 12

boolean value

Answer 12

either true or false.

Question 13

selection

Answer 13

determines which parts of an
algorithm are executed based on a condition
being true or false.

Question 14

conditional statements

Answer 14

“if-statements,”
affect the sequential flow of control by
executing different statements based on the
value of a Boolean expression.

Question 15

nested conditional statements

Answer 15

consist of
conditional statements within conditional
statements.

Question 16

iteration

Answer 16

a repeating portion of an algorithm.
Iteration repeats a specified number of times
or until a given condition is met.

Question 17

binary search algorithm

Answer 17

starts at the
middle of a sorted data set of numbers and
eliminates half of the data; this process repeat
until the desired value is found or all elements
have been eliminated.

Question 18

procedure

Answer 18

a named group of programming
instructions that may have parameters and
return values

Question 19

method / function

Answer 19

Procedures are referred to by different names,
such as method or function, depending on the
programming language.

Question 20

parameters

Answer 20

input variables of a procedure.

Question 21

arguments

Answer 21

specify the values of the
parameters when a procedure is called.

Question 22

modularity

Answer 22

subdivision of a computer program into
separate subprograms

Question 23

software library

Answer 23

contains procedures that
may be used in creating new programs.

Question 24

simulation

Answer 24

a representation that uses
varying sets of values to reflect the changing
state of a phenomenon. (EX: plane simulation: like flying a real plane but online)

Question 25

problem

Answer 25

a general description of a task
that can (or cannot) be solved algorithmically

Question 26

instance

Answer 26

a problem also includes specific
input

Question 27

decision problem

Answer 27

a problem with a yes/no
answer (e.g., is there a path from A to B?).

Question 28

optimization problem

Answer 28

a problem with the goal
of finding the “best” solution among many (e.g.,
what is the shortest path from A to B?).

Question 29

efficiency

Answer 29

an estimation of the amount of
computational resources used by an algorithm

Question 30

heuristic

Answer 30

an approach to a problem that
produces a solution that is not guaranteed to
be optimal but may be used when techniques
that are guaranteed to always find an optimal
solution are impractical.`

Question 31

decidable problem

Answer 31

a decision problem for
which an algorithm can be written to produce a
correct output for all inputs (e.g., “Is the number
even?”).

Question 32

undecidable problem

Answer 32

one for which no
algorithm can be constructed that is always
capable of providing a correct yes-or-no
answer.