WJEC AS Computer Science - 6th June 2016

Hello there!

Anyone else taking this exam? Finding it impossible to find anyone who is, let alone any revision material x.x

How is everyone feeling about it? Anyone got any advice/material?

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Reply 1

jwstarfish

Seems like no-one else is taking it but I am. There aren't any past papers so it's very difficult to revise for. I'm just going through and memorizing all the content personally

Reply 2

username2577327

Yeah I agree, it's a pain! It'd be okay if we had a book or something at least with a subject with 17 topics! My teacher has taken to giving us computing past papers rather than the computing science ones.

I'm basically doing the same at the moment; if only the spec wasn't so vague we'd be able to make sure what we're studying is actually gonna be on the test.

Reply 3

jwstarfish

I agree, the spec is terrible. I mean this:

Describe social and economic changes occurring as a resultof developments in computing and computer use, and theirmoral, ethical, legal, cultural and other consequences.

is about as vague as it gets. Pretty sure WJEC said they were producing a textbook but still haven't released it, so all we have to go on is the spec and the old Computing modules. I find it hard trying to revise when I have no idea what's gonna come up, feels like I'm wasting my time...

Reply 4

username2577327

Original post by jwstarfish

I relate to this so much! I think for that section we basically talked about how robotics could lead to jobs being lost as robots do not need holidays nor pay and can work 24/7, we also learnt the 8 principles of the Data Protection Act, those of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, and those of the Computer Misuse Act. Beyond that there was not much to go on really... Makes me very nervous

Reply 5

Oliver_

Im taking this *******s too. My teacher gave us the old cg1 and cg3 papers and an online text book, dont know if you guys have that

Reply 6

pharmhopeful16

I completely agree!!! The specification is not very specific at all! It seems that WJEC just want us to try and guess what we have to learn. And regards to the textbook the fact that other subjects have them and we don't is extremely unfair and just makes that department look lazy. All I'm doing is learning the content my lecturer has given me and finding practice questions online.

Reply 7

JamieNorth

How do you think the exam went?

Reply 8

StarfishJ

Not great. We straight up weren't taught about hashing, overflow areas, maintenance documentation, so I had to BS those questions. The rest was pretty straightforwar though I think. What do you guys reckon?

Reply 9

pharmhopeful16

I thought it was good! So similar to the spec compared to other exams. I didn't like the standard module one ☹️

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Reply 10

JamieNorth

Yeah, our teacher made his own textbook which was perfect for the specification, so we learnt all about maintenance and hashing etc. But yeah, I didn't like that standard modules either. I thought originally it was to do with networking, with like standards in networking. But it wasn't 😿😿

Reply 11

StarfishJ

What did you guys put for the maintenance and hashing question then? I said files were hashed and then you could look up their location in an index. I just made that up on the spot though. And for maintenance I just wrote documenting the program so flow charts, comments, explaining each function

Reply 12

JamieNorth

For the hash I put about it being indexed however you need to know how many records you're going to input for the hash algorithm to set limit, also if you manipulate a record you need to re-index every other record which can be time consuming.For maintanace I put about the 3 types of maintanace, so perfect ice, corrective and adaptive.

Reply 13

cjj21

How did everyone find the binary search algorithm?

Reply 14

JamieNorth

Original post by cjj21

How did everyone find the binary search algorithm?

That was alright, but it was a pseudo code that you had to do it in which, I only just realised that 10 minutes before the end, so I had to redo it again on the back. How did you find it?

Reply 15

cjj21

i found it alright, i got this:

dim x as boolean
x = true
count = 3

input searchvalue

while x = true
if searchvalue = myarray(count) then
x = false
end if

if searchvalue > myarray(count) then
count + 2
end if

if searchvalue < myarray(count) then
count - 2
end if

if searchvalue = myarray(count) then false end if if searchvalue > myarray(count) then
count + 1
end if

if searchvalue < myarray(count) then
count - 1
end if

if searchvalue = myarray(count) then
x = false

if searchvalue = myarray(count) then
x = false

if x = false
print "search found in myarray(", count, ")""

if x = true
print "search not found"

Reply 16

JamieNorth

Original post by cjj21

""

if x = true
print "search not found"

With the binary, you go to the middle array position first

Reply 17

cjj21

Original post by JamieNorth

With the binary, you go to the middle array position first

I know thats why count started off at 3. 3 Was the middle of the array

Reply 18

10SladeGV

All I had was old CG1 and CG3 textbooks that were good but not on the spec, there was also something on the Cambridge website that was **** But hey, if we all did bad, there's always the potential for the grade boundary to be low

Reply 19

JamieNorth

Original post by cjj21

I know thats why count started off at 3. 3 Was the middle of the array

With pseudo code it's suppose to be universal and so the [pos] had to be "n" first and then if it's greater or you just do n + 1 but if it's smaller you do n-1