Data representation: past paper questions

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• Question 1May/June 2026, paper 11Structured3 marks

  Data storage can be measured in different units. Tick (✓) one box to show which is the largest unit of measurement for data storage.

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• Question 1Oct/Nov 2025, paper 11Structured11 marks

  A student has an electronic calculator. The calculator has a screen that displays the result of calculations. The calculator has 8-bit registers.

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• Question 1Oct/Nov 2024, paper 11Structured6 marks

  The size of a file can be measured using different units. Tick (✓) one box to show which of these is not a unit of measurement for a file.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2023, paper 11Structured14 marks

  A car park has a payment machine that allows a customer to pay for their parking. The cost of parking is displayed as a denary number on a screen on the payment machine. The cost of parking is stored in two 8-bit binary registers.

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• Question 3May/June 2026, paper 11Structured9 marks

  Hexadecimal and binary are two examples of a number system. Give one other example of a number system.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2025, paper 11Structured12 marks

  An employee of a company sells houses. He sends images of the houses to his company. The employee compresses the image files using lossy compression before sending them.

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• Question 3Oct/Nov 2024, paper 11Structured11 marks

  A user enters text into a computer system, using a keyboard. An American standard code for information interchange (ASCII) character set is used to convert the text to binary. Identify one other character set that could be used to convert the text to binary.

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• Question 5Oct/Nov 2023, paper 11Structured14 marks

  A musician is recording herself playing the music for a song on the piano. Explain how the analogue sound is recorded and converted to digital.

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• Question 8May/June 2026, paper 11Structured10 marks

  A student opens a document on their computer and inputs text. Explain how the computer represents the text.

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• Question 3Oct/Nov 2025, paper 11Structured11 marks

  A student has a portable device. He uses an on-screen keyboard to write messages to his friend.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2024, paper 12Structured7 marks

  Data storage can be measured using different units of measurement. Identify the name of the smallest unit of measurement of data.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2023, paper 12Structured10 marks

  A register stores the binary number: 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 Give the denary number for the binary number stored in the register.

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• Question 1Oct/Nov 2025, paper 12Structured13 marks

  A toy store gives each of the toys it sells a unique code. The codes are 3-digit hexadecimal codes, for example A4B. A computer is used to store a database of the codes.

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• Question 3Oct/Nov 2024, paper 12Structured13 marks

  A user enters data that is hexadecimal into a computer system. The data is converted to binary to be processed by the computer. Give one similarity between hexadecimal and binary.

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• Question 5Oct/Nov 2023, paper 12Structured5 marks

  A band is recording their new song. They need to consider the sample rate and sample resolution of their recording. Give one benefit of using a higher sample rate to record the song.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2025, paper 12Structured7 marks

  Two binary numbers are stored in a computer. Add the two binary numbers using binary addition. Give your answer in binary.

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• Question 1Oct/Nov 2024, paper 13Structured15 marks

  Data can be measured using different units of storage. Tick (✓) one box to show which of the following is the largest unit of data storage.

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• Question 1Oct/Nov 2023, paper 13Structured8 marks

  A mobile telephone has built-in input and output devices. Give two examples of an input device that would be built into a mobile telephone.

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• Question 6May/June 2026, paper 12Structured10 marks

  A student has an application (app) on their smartphone that can be used to identify the name of a flower.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2024, paper 13Structured24 marks

  An employee has a report that they need to email to their employer. The employee compresses the report file before emailing it. State the effect the compression has on the report file.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2023, paper 13Structured13 marks

  Humans use a denary number system and computers use a binary number system. Explain what is meant by a binary number system.

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• Question 5Oct/Nov 2025, paper 13Structured7 marks

  Text, images and sound are represented as binary to be processed by a computer. Complete the table by writing the missing terms and descriptions about representing text, images and sound as binary.

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• Question 2May/June 2024, paper 11Structured4 marks

  Hypertext markup language (HTML) colour codes can be represented as hexadecimal. Tick (✓) one box to show which statement about the hexadecimal number system is incorrect.

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• Question 7Oct/Nov 2023, paper 13Structured6 marks

  A photographer takes an image with a digital camera. The photographer sets the resolution and colour depth for the image. State what is meant by the image resolution.

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• Question 3May/June 2026, paper 13Structured14 marks

  A student is playing her piano. She uses her tablet computer to record the sound produced by the piano. The tablet computer has built-in input and output devices.

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• Question 1May/June 2025, paper 11Structured4 marks

  The size of a file can be measured using different data storage units. Tick (✓) one box to show the smallest data storage unit.

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• Question 3May/June 2024, paper 11Structured5 marks

  The binary number 10100011 is stored in random access memory (RAM). A logical left shift of three places is performed on the binary number. Give the 8-bit binary number that will be stored after the shift has taken place.

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• Question 1May/June 2023, paper 11Structured11 marks

  Binary is a number system used by computers. Tick (✓) one box to show which statement about the binary number system is correct.

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• Question 8May/June 2026, paper 13Structured10 marks

  A building has a security keypad that requires the input of a 3-digit denary number. The denary number input is then converted to an 8-bit binary number. The denary numbers 071 and 200 are input.

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• Question 2May/June 2025, paper 11Structured9 marks

  A clothes store has a ticket system to allow customers to speak to a personal shopper. The ticket displays a ticket number in hexadecimal, for example 11B. The ticket system has an output device that creates a paper ticket.

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