Algorithm Design and Problem-solving: past paper questions

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• Question 4May/June 2026, paper 21Structured4 marks

  An algorithm is expressed as: • A user inputs a sequence of integer values. • The process will calculate the number of positive integers.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2025, paper 21Structured5 marksHas a diagram

  Data is a global 1D array containing 30 elements of type STRING An algorithm will output: • all non-blank elements (elements that do not contain an empty string) • the final total of the number of elements output.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2024, paper 21Structured6 marks

  2 A program uses three global integer variables HH, MM and SS to represent the current time in hours, minutes and seconds using the 24-hour clock notation. Midnight would be represented as 00:00:00 (HH:MM:SS).

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2023, paper 21Structured7 marks

  An algorithm is expressed as follows: • input 100 numbers, one at a time • keep a total of all numbers input that have a value between 30 and 70 inclusive and output this total after the last number has been input.

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• Question 8May/June 2026, paper 21Structured6 marks

  Global array MyData contains the values shown.

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• Question 4Oct/Nov 2025, paper 21Structured9 marks

  A program contains a global 1D array Number consisting of 20 elements of type REAL A procedure Store() will input a sequence of up to 20 real values, one value at a time.

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• Question 3Oct/Nov 2024, paper 21Structured9 marks

  3 An algorithm will output the last three lines from a text file Result.txt The lines need to be output in the same order as they appear in the file. Assume: • Three variables LineX, LineY and LineZ will store the three lines.

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• Question 4Oct/Nov 2023, paper 21Structured9 marks

  A global array is declared in pseudocode as follows: DECLARE Data : ARRAY[1:150] OF STRING A function TooMany() will: 1. take two parameters: • a string (the search string) • an integer (the maximum value) 2.

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• Question 9May/June 2026, paper 21Structured18 marksHas a diagram

  A hotel has three floors numbered 0 to 2 (floor 0 is the ground floor). There are 15 rooms on each floor. The hotel gets many enquiries from customers to check if a room is available that day.

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• Question 5Oct/Nov 2025, paper 21Structured6 marks

  A program is being designed in pseudocode.

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• Question 6Oct/Nov 2024, paper 21Structured9 marks

  6 A factory produces food items. The items must be used within a certain number of days after their production date. The number of days is known as the shelf life.

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• Question 5Oct/Nov 2023, paper 21Structured7 marks

  An algorithm is designed to find the smallest numeric value from an input sequence and count how many numeric values have been input.

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• Question 2May/June 2026, paper 22Structured5 marks

  2 A new computer system is being developed to help manage a tool hire business. A customer can specify if they want to hire a tool for either half a day or a full day. An abstract model for the new system is required.

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• Question 6Oct/Nov 2025, paper 21Structured9 marks

  Students are learning about a simple check digit method for data validation. In this method, a single check digit is appended to the end of an original number to give a new number.

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• Question 4Oct/Nov 2024, paper 22Structured6 marks

  A global integer variable Tick is always incremented every millisecond (1000 times per second) regardless of the other programs running. The value of Tick can be read by any program but the value should not be changed. Assume that the value of Tick does not overflow.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2023, paper 22Structured7 marksHas a diagram

  An algorithm will: 1. input a sequence of integer values, one at a time 2. ignore all values until the value 27 is input, then sum the remaining values in the sequence 3.

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• Question 3May/June 2026, paper 22Structured6 marks

  3 A computer game uses a text file named WordList.txt containing 10000 words, all in lower case. Each word is unique and is stored on a separate line of the text file. An efficient algorithm is needed to check that a word input by the user is stored in WordList.txt.

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• Question 8Oct/Nov 2025, paper 21Structured17 marks

  A program is being developed to manage student book loans from a college library. Students may borrow up to five books at a time from the library. The programmer has defined a record type to define each loan.

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• Question 6Oct/Nov 2024, paper 22Structured9 marks

  A shop sells sandwiches and snacks. The owner chooses a ‘daily special’ sandwich which is displayed on a board outside the shop. Each ‘daily special’ has two different fillings and is made with one type of bread.

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• Question 4Oct/Nov 2023, paper 22Structured9 marks

  A procedure Count() will: 1. input a value (all values will be positive integers) 2. count the number of odd values and count the number of even values 3.

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• Question 5May/June 2026, paper 22Structured10 marks

  5 A programmer has defined a global 1D array Numbers of type INTEGER, which can store 1000 integers. The lower bound of the array Numbers is set to 1. Each element of the array has been initialised with a random integer in the range 200 to 99999.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2025, paper 22Structured5 marksHas a diagram

  Data is a global 1D array containing 20 elements of type REAL An algorithm will: • input a sequence of real values, one at a time • assign each value to…

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• Question 7Oct/Nov 2024, paper 22Structured10 marks

  A coffee shop runs a computerised loyalty card system. Customers are issued with a loyalty card with their name together with a unique customer ID.

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• Question 5Oct/Nov 2023, paper 22Structured6 marks

  A global 1D array of integers contains four elements, which are assigned values as shown: Mix[1] ← 1 Mix[2] ← 3 Mix[3] ← 4 Mix[4] ← 2 A procedure Process() manipulates the values in the array.

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• Question 4May/June 2026, paper 23Structured4 marks

  An algorithm is expressed as: • A user inputs a sequence of integers. • The user will input value –1 to indicate there are no more integers to be input. • The program will calculate the total number of integers greater than 120.

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• Question 3Oct/Nov 2025, paper 22Structured10 marks

  A text file OldFile.txt contains IDs, names and email addresses for members of a club. Three information items are stored for each member and each item is stored on a separate line.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2024, paper 23Structured7 marks

  An algorithm will: 1. prompt and input a sequence of 100 integer values, one at a time 2. sum the positive integers 3.

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• Question 8Oct/Nov 2023, paper 22Structured18 marks

  A class of students are developing a program to send data between computers. Many computers are connected together to form a wired network. Serial ports are used to connect one computer to another.

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• Question 6May/June 2026, paper 23Structured13 marksHas a diagram

  A linked list is an example of an Abstract Data Type (ADT). A linked list is implemented using: • a 1D array for the data items • a 1D array for the link pointers • a start pointer. The linked list maintains the data items in alphabetical order.

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• Question 4Oct/Nov 2025, paper 22Structured13 marks

  A quiz has nine questions. There are: • five easy questions each worth 3 points • four hard questions each worth 5 points. At the end of the quiz the points for each correctly answered question are added to give a total score.

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