Overview

Overall, I would say that I did pretty good. I definitely need more practice since it took me a relatively long time to answer each question. However, the main problem was the density of the questions. In other words, as I reached the final 5-10 questions of the test, my attention span became non-existent. So I need to get used to answering 50 questions in a relatively short amount of time.

Q14 Biologists tracking wild animals

Biologists often attach tracking collars to wild animals. For each animal, the following geolocation data is collected at frequent intervals.

  • The time

  • The date

  • The location of the animal

Which of the following questions about a particular animal could NOT be answered using only the data collected from the tracking collars?

A: Approximately how many miles did the animal travel in one week?

B: Does the animal travel in groups with other tracked animals?

C: Do the movement patterns of the animal vary according to the weather?

D: In what geographic locations does the animal typically travel?

My Answer: Does the animal travel in groups with other tracked animals?

Correct Answer: Do the movement patterns of the animal vary according to the weather?

Explanation: I think I picked something randomly without reading it and forgot to change it.

Q23 Searching patterns in large sets of data

Computers are often used to search through large sets of data to find useful patterns in the data. Which of the following tasks is NOT an example where searching for patterns is needed to produce useful information?

A: A credit card company analyzing credit card purchases to identify potential fraudulent charges

B: A grocery store analyzing customers’ past purchases to suggest new products the customer may be interested in

C: A high school analyzing student grades to identify the students with the top ten highest grade point averages

D: An online retailer analyzing customers’ viewing habits to suggest other products based on the purchasing history of other customers

My Answer: An online retailer analyzing customers’ viewing habits to suggest other products based on the purchasing history of other customers

Correct Answer: A high school analyzing student grades to identify the students with the top ten highest grade point averages

Explanation: By current standards, a single high school’s list of student grades is not considered a large set of data. Furthermore, identifying 10 students with the highest grade point averages is not an example of finding patterns.

Q44 Use of procedure to search a dictionary

A student is developing a program that allows users to look up the definitions of words that appear in a book.

The student plans to perform a large number of searches through a dictionary containing words and their definitions. The student will use a procedure written by a computer scientist to quickly search the dictionary (and knows that the procedure will return a definition if one is available). The student cannot modify the search procedure written by the computer scientist but can call the procedure by supplying a word.

Which of the following is a true statement about the student’s use of the computer scientist’s search procedure?

A: The student is changing the search procedure’s internal abstractions.

B: The student is modifying the search procedure to take a definition as an argument and return the corresponding word.

C: The student is reusing the computer scientist’s procedural abstraction by knowing what the procedure does without knowing how it does it.

D: The student is reusing the computer scientist’s procedural abstraction by using duplicate code each time a search needs to occur.

My Answer: The student is reusing the computer scientist’s procedural abstraction by using duplicate code each time a search needs to occur.

Correct Answer: The student is reusing the computer scientist’s procedural abstraction by knowing what the procedure does without knowing how it does it.

Explanation: The student knows that the procedure searches for a value without knowing how it does the searching. This is an example of the use of procedural abstraction.

Q49 Traverse list to compare quiz scores

A teacher stores the most recent quiz scores for her class in the list scores. The first element in the list holds the maximum possible number of points that can be awarded on the quiz, and each remaining element holds one student’s quiz score. Assume that scores contains at least two elements. Which of the following code segments will set the variable found to true if at least one student scored the maximum possible number of points on the quiz and will set found to false otherwise?

My Answer: D

Correct Answer: A

Explanation: This code segment traverses the list beginning with the second element, so it is correctly comparing only student scores to the maximum possible score, which is found by accessing scores[ 1 ]. The variable found will only be set to true when a student’s score equals the maximum possible score. The code also sets the number of iterations to LENGTH(scores) - 1 to reflect that the first list element (maximum score) is skipped.