Official AQA New Spec AS Level Computer Science Thread - 6th of June

Is there an unnoficial mark scheme out yet?

Torpedo* xD

Did everyone get the same questions even tho if you were in another language?

Guys for the validation change, the question only asked to validate that row was entered correctly (they even had it in bold), will you lose marks for also validating column?

I think the words "sorting algorithm" or some kind of explanation ("puts each unique number in ascending order") would have sufficed.

The Finite State Machine "language" question seemed a bit weird to me - I put something like "any number of '1's followed by '0x' or 'x' will be accepted". I was expecting it to only accept five letter words or binary numbers greater than 10 or something - I couldn't find any useful pattern in the FSM.

I think the answers to question 3 (sqrt(x)) were "Acceptable", "Boundary" and "Erroneous" in that order.

Were the logic questions at the very beginning 'B' and 'C'?

The trace wasn't a sorting algorithm. It copied the array so that each number only appeared once.

Are you sure? The array was "12, 25, 12, 53" and it changed to "12, 25, 53", thus my description of what happened ("each unique number is put in ascending order") was correct for that case. But depending on what the algorithm did in other cases (e.g. would "12, 53, 12, 25" have ended up as "12, 25, 53" or "12, 53, 25"), you might be correct.

I imagine you probably are correct but I don't suppose you have a copy of the original algorithm (or can remember it)?

How did everyone's centres handle printing? We were told to print before the end of the exam and the invigilator would deliver it to us. Of course, everyone printed seconds before the end (why would you finish early and waste time?). The invigilator couldn't manage to keep up with the printer. She asked us to collect our own work. To put a long story short everyone's work got mixed up, and there was a massive cluster**** and a lot of communication around the printer.

The timing issue was made worse because:
- one room were permitted to complete the front page details on the electronic answer document before the start of the exam, while the other room were not
- upon launching the Python interpreter it automatically began installing something for a minute or so
- my right mouse button was broken
- I was provided with PDFs of the question booklet on the computer, but no PDF reader

I told AQA but they're not interested, not sure whether I should tell my school as I don't want to cause any issues.

Is there an unnoficial mark scheme out yet?

How did everyone's centres handle printing? We were told to print before the end of the exam and the invigilator would deliver it to us. Of course, everyone printed seconds before the end (why would you finish early and waste time?). The invigilator couldn't manage to keep up with the printer. She asked us to collect our own work. To put a long story short everyone's work got mixed up, and there was a massive cluster**** and a lot of communication around the printer.

The timing issue was made worse because:
- one room were permitted to complete the front page details on the electronic answer document before the start of the exam, while the other room were not
- upon launching the Python interpreter it automatically began installing something for a minute or so
- my right mouse button was broken
- I was provided with PDFs of the question booklet on the computer, but no PDF reader

I told AQA but they're not interested, not sure whether I should tell my school as I don't want to cause any issues.