WJEC AS Computer Science - Unit 1 - Post-Exam discussion thread

meowimacow

How did everyone find the exam? I thought it went pretty well, hoping for an A

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Reply 1

DiReLiVeS

Original post by meowimacow

How did everyone find the exam? I thought it went pretty well, hoping for an A

I thought it was good but I messed up on quite a few questions still

Reply 2

JJGear

A few of the bigger questions threw me, meaning I probably lost quite a few marks which hopefully the smaller maths questions made up for. Questions 8 and 9, with the respective 6 and 4 mark questions of mark up programming paradigms and Lossy compression. I was unsure how to get 6 marks on Mark Up languages - but I hadn't revised Lossy compression so couldn't quite answer it, I rambled a bit though. Also the 10 mark at the end, not sure quite what I needed to talk about in order to gain all the marks?

Reply 3

DiReLiVeS

Original post by JJGear

Ye im abit of the opposite i couldnt do one of the mantissa questions because i just completely forgot how to do it lol. The lossy question was also very hard as there is little information about it so its hard to know what to talk about.

Reply 4

meowimacow

Original post by JJGear

Were you doing Eduqas by any chance, not WJEC? My paper didn't have those questions

Reply 5

dxfgch

Original post by meowimacow

Were you doing Eduqas by any chance, not WJEC? My paper didn't have those questions

Yeah they're talking about the EDUQAS paper. I think people don't realise there are seperate exams for the WJEC and Eduqas.

ahhhh lol my bad

Original post by DiReLiVeS

What did you get for the Boolean alegbra question?

Reply 8

DiReLiVeS

Original post by dxfgch

What did you get for the Boolean alegbra question?

A.B + C

Reply 9

dxfgch

Original post by DiReLiVeS

A.B + C

Yeah I got that too.

Reply 10

DiReLiVeS

Original post by dxfgch

Yeah I got that too.

How did you find it overall? any questions harder in particular?

Reply 11

dxfgch

Original post by DiReLiVeS

How did you find it overall? any questions harder in particular?

I thought it was OK. For the fetch, execute cycle I only described what each component does. Would I still get marks?

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 12

DiReLiVeS

Original post by dxfgch

I thought it was OK. For the fetch, execute cycle I only described what each component does. Would I still get marks?

hmm hard to say I talked about the whole fetch cycle and then the execute cycle and mentioned PC MAR MDR etc. What did you get for the two mantissa questions?

Reply 13

dxfgch

Original post by DiReLiVeS

hmm hard to say I talked about the whole fetch cycle and then the execute cycle and mentioned PC MAR MDR etc. What did you get for the two mantissa questions?

I described what those registers do and said the PC increments to point to the next instruction to be fetched and executed.

I think after you add the 2 binary numbers and convert to hex you get A3.

Was the question to convert 2.375 into floating point form? I can't remember my answer but I usually get these questions right.

Reply 14

DiReLiVeS

Original post by dxfgch

Ye I got A3. It said convert 2.375 and at the bottom it said find the denary value of a given mantissa and expo (I got 30).

Reply 15

dxfgch

Original post by DiReLiVeS

Ye I got A3. It said convert 2.375 and at the bottom it said find the denary value of a given mantissa and expo (I got 30).

For the mantissa it halves each time: 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625, etc.
For the exponent it is like binary.
Then the denary equivalent is the mantissa X 2^exponent

I can't remember what answer I wrote though.

What did you write for how the O/S provides a user interface? Were you supposed to mention things like: it provides meaningful icons and allows for the creation of shortcuts?