Q23 Searching patterns in large sets of data - 5B, 2.3 - Extracting Information from Data

Directions: The question or incomplete statement below is followed by four suggested answers or completions. Select the one that is best in each case.

Computers are often used to search through large sets of data to find useful patterns in the data. Which of the following tasks is NOT an example where searching for patterns is needed to produce useful information?

A) A credit card company analyzing credit card purchases to identify potential fraudulent charges

B) A grocery store analyzing customers’ past purchases to suggest new products the customer may be interested in

C) A high school analyzing student grades to identify the students with the top ten highest grade point averages

D) An online retailer analyzing customers’ viewing habits to suggest other products based on the purchasing history of other customers

Answer C

This option is correct. By current standards, a single high school’s list of student grades is not considered a large set of data. Furthermore, identifying 10 students with the highest grade point averages is not an example of finding patterns.

Q24 The table below shows the time a computer - 5D, 2.3 - Extracting Information from Data

The table below shows the time a computer system takes to complete a specified task on the customer data of different-sized companies.

The figure shows a table with 4 columns and 5 rows. The top row contains the column labels, from left to right; column 1, Task; column 2, Small Company (approximately 100 customers); column 3, Medium Company (approximately 1,000 customers); column 4, Large Company (approximately 10,000 customers). From top to bottom, the data is as follows: Row 2; Task, Backing up data, Small Company, 2 hours, Medium Company, 20 hours, Large Company, 200 hours. Row 3; Task, Deleting entries from data, Small Company, 100 hours, Medium Company, 200 hours, Large Company, 300 hours. Row 4; Task, Searching through data, Small Company, 250 hours, Medium Company, 300 hours, Large Company, 350 hours. Row 5; Task, Sorting data, Small Company, 0.01 hours, Medium Company, 1 hour, Large Company, 100 hours.

Based on the information in the table, which of the following tasks is likely to take the longest amount of time when scaled up for a very large company of approximately 100,000 customers?

A) Backing Up Data

B) Deleting Entries from Data

C) Searching Through Data

D) Sorting Data

Answer D

Q44 Use of procedure to search a dictionary - 3C, 3.13 - Developing Procedures

A student is developing a program that allows users to look up the definitions of words that appear in a book.

The student plans to perform a large number of searches through a dictionary containing words and their definitions. The student will use a procedure written by a computer scientist to quickly search the dictionary (and knows that the procedure will return a definition if one is available). The student cannot modify the search procedure written by the computer scientist but can call the procedure by supplying a word.

Which of the following is a true statement about the student’s use of the computer scientist’s search procedure?

A) The student is changing the search procedure's internal abstractions.

B) The student is modifying the search procedure to take a definition as an argument and return the corresponding word.

C) The student is reusing the computer scientist's procedural abstraction by knowing what the procedure does without knowing how it does it.

D) The student is reusing the computer scientist's procedural abstraction by using duplicate code each time a search needs to occur.

Answer D

Incorrect. The use of a procedural abstraction generalizes the search functionality instead of duplicating code.