Ryan Liu Period 4 Lopez Score: 63/70
The Journey
To prepare for the upcoming MC Quiz, I focused primarily on reviewing lessons from my student teaching experience. These lessons proved highly beneficial in offering comprehensive insights into various topics, particularly those related to Big Ideas 4 and 5, which emphasized lesson programming and real-world applications in computing. These lessons helped me with a lot of the fact based questions. Additionally, I conducted online research to supplement information on topics from the student lessons that I felt needed further exploration. Having some experience in algorithmic coding, I found the Collegeboard Pseudocode/algorithm questions relatively manageable. They seemed to require thoughtful consideration and logical reasoning. I discovered that a successful strategy for these questions involved mapping out algorithms on paper such as ones that involved math/computation or using fingers to trace on-screen elements, especially in the case of robot problems. The most challenging problems for me involved technical details related to the functioning of the internet and information transfer. Although I answered these questions correctly this time, I recognize the need to solidify my understanding of such information as for a lot of these questions, I had to double check with my peers as I wasn’t so confident in my answer choice. That being said, by discussing some of the more difficult questions with peers, I was able to learn a lot and correct my mistakes. To improve, I plan to watch Collegeboard videos on these topics, take notes, and review the material regularly to ensure I am well-prepared for the AP test scheduled for next May. I will also continue asking my peers questions that I need help with so that I can better understand topics that I struggle with.
Questions that I missed
Q19: Which of the following best explains how devices and information can be susceptible to unauthorized access if weak passwords are used?
A Unauthorized individuals can deny service to a computing system by overwhelming the system with login attempts.
B Unauthorized individuals can exploit vulnerabilities in compression algorithms to determine a user’s password from their decompressed data.
C Unauthorized individuals can exploit vulnerabilities in encryption algorithms to determine a user’s password from their encryption key.
D Unauthorized individuals can use data mining and other techniques to guess a user’s password.
Answer: D A strong password is something that is easy for a user to remember but would be difficult for someone else to guess based on knowledge of that user. Weak passwords can often be guessed based on publicly available information about a user. Other weak passwords (such as “password” or “1234”) can often be guessed because they are commonly used.
Why I got it wrong: Overall, I’m just not very knowledgable in the field of encryption-decryption using public & private keys, which is why I chose C. This is wrong because The exploitation of encryption algorithms is not related to password strength. I learned that data mining is the process of using computers and automation to search large sets of data for patterns and trends, turning those findings into business insights and predictions. Compression algorithms are the lossless and lossy compressions.
Q24: In which of the following situations would it be most appropriate to choose lossy compression over lossless compression?
A Storing digital photographs to be printed and displayed in a large format in an art gallery
B Storing a formatted text document to be restored to its original version for a print publication
C Storing music files on a smartphone in order to maximize the number of songs that can be stored
D Storing a video file on an external device in order to preserve the highest possible video quality
Answer: C In situations where minimizing data size or transmission time is maximally important, lossy compression algorithms are typically chosen.
Why I got it wrong: I just simply misread the the question/answer choices. For C I assumed that the user cared about the music quality too, where lossy compression would not be a good choice, but actually choice C just wants to maximize the number of songs stored. I chose B which is wrong because In situations where the ability to reconstruct an original is maximally important, lossless compression algorithms are typically chosen.
Q36: Individuals sometimes attempt to remove personal information from the Internet. Which of the following is the LEAST likely reason the personal information is hard to remove?
A Internet users with a copy of the information might redistribute the personal information without first seeking permission.
B There are potentially an extremely large number of devices on the Internet that may contain the information.
C Automated technologies collect information about Internet users without their knowledge.
D All personal information is stored online using authentication measures, making the information hard to access.
Answer: D Personal information can be found in a variety of places where authentication measures may not be used, including social media sites. Personal information placed online can be collected, aggregated, distributed, and exploited.
Why I got it wrong: I think I misread the question and chose the answer choice that is the MOST likely instead of the LEAST likely. And in this case, it is very possible that personal information can be shared to numerous amounts of people through online tools. I chose B which is incorrect because Search engines, social media sites, and other data aggregators can automatically collect personal information that is posted online.
Q43: Which of the following best exemplifies the use of keylogging to gain unauthorized access to a computer system?
A A user unintentionally installs a program on their computer that records all user input and forwards it to another computer. A few weeks later, someone else is able to access the user’s computer using the recorded data.
B A user has a very common password for an online banking account. Someone else guesses the password after a few attempts and gains access to the user’s account.
C A user logs into an unsecure Web site. Someone else is able to view unencrypted log-in information as it is transmitted over the Internet. The user has the same username and password for multiple accounts, so the user’s log-in information for multiple systems may be compromised.
D A user receives an e-mail that claims to be from the user’s bank. The e-mail instructs the user to click on a link to a Web site and enter a username and password to verify an account. Shortly after following the steps, the user discovers that the Web site is fraudulent and that the user’s username and password were stolen.
Answer: A Keylogging is the use of a program to record every keystroke made by a computer to gain fraudulent access to passwords and other confidential information.
Why I got it wrong: I didn’t know what keylogging was prior to taking this MCQ and as a result, I got this question wrong. I learned that keylogging are tools that record what a person types on a device. While there are legitimate and legal uses for keyloggers, many uses for keyloggers are malicious. In a keylogger attack, the keylogger software records every keystroke on the victim’s device and sends it to the attacker. I chose C which is incorrect because This is an example of intercepted network data. While intercepted network data may enable an unauthorized user to gain access to a computer system, it is not an example of keylogging.
Q52: A sorted list of numbers contains 128 elements. Which of the following is closest to the maximum number of list elements that can be examined when performing a binary search for a value in the list?
A 2
B 8
C 64
D 128
Answer: B The binary search algorithm starts at the middle of the list and repeatedly eliminates half the elements until the desired value is found or all elements have been eliminated. For a list with 128 elements, the list will be cut in half a maximum of 7 times (causing 8 elements to be examined). The list will start with 128 elements, then 64 elements, then 32 elements, then 16 elements, then 8 elements, then 4 elements, then 2 elements, then 1 element.
Why I got it wrong: I didn’t understand the terminology that the question used. After reading the solution, I think that this question is essentially just asking for how many elements are being examined by this binary search or how much ‘halves’/iterations are being examined. I chose C which is incorrect because While a binary search on a list of length 128 will eliminate 64 elements on the first iteration, fewer than 64 iterations are needed to eliminate all elements.
Q55:
Answer: C This code segment assigns the value of the last element of the list to the variable temp, then removes the last element of the list, then inserts temp as the first element of the list.
Why I got it wrong: The main reason why I got this question wrong was that I didn’t realize that append added the element to the very end of a list. To be honest, this was a pretty easy question and I definetly should have been able to get this right. The key thing to note is that append always adds elements to the very of a list and not the very front. This means that we would have to use the ‘insert’ for this question. I chose A which is incorrect because This code segment assigns the value of the last element of the list to the variable temp, then removes the last element of the list, then appends temp to the end of the list. The resulting list is the same as the original list.
Q63:
Answer: A & D When input1 and input2 are both true, the expressions (NOT input1) and (NOT input2) are both false, so (NOT input1) OR (NOT input2) will evaluate to false. In all other cases, either (NOT input1) or (NOT input2) (or both) will evaluate to true, so (NOT input1) OR (NOT input2) will evaluate to true. When input1 and input2 are both true, the expression (input1 AND input2) is true, so NOT (input1 AND input2) will evaluate to false. In all other cases, (input1 AND input2) will evaluate to false, so NOT (input1 AND input2) will evaluate to true.
Why I got this wrong: I think I mainly got this question wrong because it was pretty confusing and complex in its nature. I had to not only find values from the table, I also had to know logic gates and then finally compare the expected answer to the given answer on the table. I think I went wrong with this question because I made a mistake sometime during this solving process due to the seemingly overwhelming amount of steps. This was also one of the last problems on the MCQ so I was probably struggling due to fatigue too. I chose C & D where C is incorrect because For example, when input1 is true and input2 is false, then (input1 OR input2) will be true. Therefore, NOT (input1 OR input2) will be false instead of the intended value true.