Topic 5

Question 1

What is decomposition?

Answer 1

Breaking a complex problem, down into smaller problems and solving each one individually

Question 2

What is abstraction?

Answer 2

Taking out the important bits of information from the problem, ignoring specific details that don’t matter

Question 3

What is algorithmic thinking?

Answer 3

A logical way of getting from a problem to a solution. If the steps you take to solve follow an algorithm you it can be reused and adapt to solve similar problems in the future.

Question 4

What does an oval mean in a flow chart

Answer 4

Start/end

Question 5

What is a parallelogram box mean in a flowchart

Answer 5

Input/output

Question 6

What does a box mean in a flowchart?

Answer 6

General, instructions, processes and calculations

Question 7

What does a diamond box mean in a flowchart?

Answer 7

A decision

Question 8

What is a box inside a box mean in a flowchart

Answer 8

Subprogram

Question 9

What is the arrow show in a flowchart?

Answer 9

Arrows connect the boxes and show the direction you should follow

Question 10

Conditions for a binary search

Answer 10

List must be ordered

Question 11

Process of a binary search

Answer 11

Find the middle term in your ordered list
If this is your item then stop
If not compare with the item, you’re looking for, if the middle term comes before get rid of second half and vice versa
You’ll be left for the last half the size of the original list. Repeat steps one to 3 until you find the item.

Question 12

What can a linear search be used on?

Answer 12

Unordered list

Question 13

Process for linear search

Answer 13

Look at the first item in the unordered list
If this is your items in stop
Then look at the next item in the list
Repeat steps 2 to 3 until you’ve checked every item or found the one you’re looking for

Question 14

Advantages of binary search

Answer 14

Faster
Takes fewer steps

Question 15

Advantages of linear

Answer 15

Simple
Can be done on any type of list

Question 16

Disadvantages of binary search

Answer 16

List must be ordered

Question 17

Disadvantages of linear

Answer 17

Slow
Takes a lot of steps

Question 18

What is bubble sort?

Answer 18

A sorting algorithm?

Question 19

Pros of bubble sort

Answer 19

Simple
Efficient have already in order
Don’t use much memory

Question 20

Cons of bubble sort

Answer 20

Inefficient way to sort a list
Doesn’t cope well with very large lists

Question 21

Process of bubble sort

Answer 21

Look at the first two items in the list
Move the correct order
Look at the next pair of items
Move to correct order
Repeat until end of list
Go back to the first pair and compare
Repeat process until list is in an order
One final pass to check

Question 22

Process of merge sort

Answer 22

Split the list in half
Keep missing list and half until each list only contains one item
Merge pairs of sublists each merge order the correct way
Repeat until you’ve merged all the sub lists together

Question 23

Pros of merge sort

Answer 23

More efficient and quicker
Very consistent running time

Question 24

Cons of Merge sort

Answer 24

It’s slower for small lists
Uses more memory

Question 25

Process for insertion sort

Answer 25

Look at second item in a list
Compare to all items before it, and insert the number into the right place
Repeat step two for all items in the list, until the last number has been inserted into the correct place

Question 26

Advantages for insertion sort

Answer 26

Very intuitive
Coped well with smallest
Doesn’t require very much additional memory
Very quick
Very quickly checking this is already sorted

Question 27

Disadvantages for insertion sort

Answer 27

Doesn’t cope well with very large lists