Cambridge Ordinary Level

2210 Computer Science November 2024

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Paper 2210/12
Computer Systems

Key messages

Candidates need to show a greater use of technical terminology in their responses. Candidates will also
need to note the key terms given in a question. They must structure their response using these. They must
also use the given context in their responses.

General comments

If a candidate writes their response to a question on an additional page, they must indicate very clearly on
the script where their response is to be found. If answers are crossed out, any new answer must be written
very clearly, so that the text can be easily read.

Comments on specific questions

Question 1

(a) Many candidates were able to state what is meant by sof tware. The most common responses
included ref erence to it being the intangible parts of a computer system.

(b) Many candidates were able to tick the correct option. The most common incorrect answer given
was spreadsheet.

(c) Many candidates were able to identif y the correct type of sof tware.

Question 2

(a) Most candidates were able to identify the smallest unit of data. The most common incorrect answer
given was nibble.

(b) Many candidates were able to give the correct number of nibbles. The most common incorrect
answer given was 8.

(c) Many candidates were able to give one or two correct stages of working. Few candidates were able
to give the correct answer.

(d) (i) Most candidates were able to state what is meant by file compression. Some candidates f ocused
on a particular kind of compression rather that compression in general. For example, stating that it
is when data is permanently removed from the file. This would not be true in all examples of f ile
compression.

(ii) Many candidates were able to give a benefit of compressing the file. Some candidates incorrectly
f ocused on benef its f or transmission of the f ile rather than f or the storage of the f ile.

Question 3

(a) (i) Many candidates were able to give one similarity. Some candidates provided vague responses that
did not have the level of accuracy needed. For example, they are both used to represent data.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

(ii) Many candidates were able to give two dif f erences between binary and hexadecimal. Some
candidates gave one difference split across the two sections. Candidates are reminded that if they
are asked to provided differences between two options that they need to include ref ence to both
options in the difference. For example, just stating ‘hexadecimal uses letters’ is not enough as it
does not include ref erence to how binary is dif f erent to this.

(b) Many candidates were able to provide the correct binary conversions.

(c) Many candidates were able to provide the correct hexadecimal conversions.

(d) (i) Many candidates were able to describe the logical shif t that would be perf ormed on the binary
integer.

(ii) Many candidates were able to provide the correct effect on the binary integer. Some candidates
gave a vague response that did not have the required level of accuracy. For example, stating that
the value is increased or changed.

(e) Many candidates were able to give the correct name of the number system.

Question 4

(a) Most candidates identif ied two correct input devices. The most common correct answer was
touchscreen. Some candidates gave generic input devices that were not suitable f or the context
given in the question, f or example a mouse and a keyboard.

(b) Most candidates identified a correct output device. The most common correct answer was a display
screen. Some candidates gave a generic output device that was not suitable for the context given
in the question, f or example a printer.

(c) Many candidates were able to explain the role of the ROM in the smart watch. Some candidates
gave a description of what is meant by primary storage rather than explaining the role of the ROM.

(d) (i) Many candidates were able to show understanding of cloud storage. The main understanding
shown is that the data is stored on servers that are in a remote location.

(ii) Some candidates were able to explain the benefits of the application using cloud storage. Many
candidates focused on repeating understanding shown in part (d)(i). For example, stating that a
benef it is that the internet is used to access the data. Candidates need a greater understanding of
a wider range of benef its of cloud storage.

(e) Many candidates were able to recognise that the smartwatch is an embedded system and gave the
reason f or this being that it has limited f unctionality.

Question 5

(a) Some candidates were able to describe how the system checked f o r errors. Many candidates
f ocused their answer on describing how a barcode scanner operates rather than showing
understanding of how the check digit is used to check f or errors.

(b) (i) Many candidates were able to describe how data is sent using the serial simplex data transmission
method.

(ii) Many candidates were able to give good reasons why serial simplex data transmission was used.
The most common reason given was that the data would have f ewer errors af ter transmission.

(iii) Most candidates were able to give two other error detection methods that could have been used.

Question 6

Some candidates were able to correctly complete the f ull table. The most common correct answers were
MAR and data bus. Candidates appeared to have a common misconception about the purpose of the
accumulator. Many candidates described it as carrying out calculations, however the accumulator does not
do this.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

Question 7

(a) Some candidates were able to correctly state what is meant by a URL. Many candidates gave a
vague description about it being an address for the website. This lacked any technical detail about
it being a text-based address.

(b) Many candidates were able to identif y parts of a URL.

(c) Many candidates were able to identif y the correct sof tware.

(d) Some candidates were able to draw a correct and technical diagram to show the process of
retrieving web pages. Some candidates showed a misconception that the request for the web page
is sent f rom the DNS to the web server.

(e) Many candidates were able to complete the paragraph with the correct terms.

Question 8

(a) Most candidates were able to tick the correct option.

(b) Many candidates were able to circle the three correct components.

(c) Few candidates were able to explain how the robot vacuum could make use of machine learning.
Many candidates just described what machine learning is rather than ref erring to how it could be
used.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Paper 2210/13
Computer Systems

Key messages

Candidates need to show a greater use of technical terminology in their responses. Candidates will also
need to note the key terms given in a question. They must structure their response using these. They must
also use the given context in their responses.

General comments

If a candidate writes their response to a question on an additional page, they must indicate very clearly on
the script where their response is to be found. If answers are crossed out, any new answer must be written
very clearly, so that the text can be easily read.

Comments on specific questions

Question 1

(a) Most candidates were able to tick the correct option. The most common incorrect answer was
tebibyte.

(b) Most candidates were able to identify a correct example of primary storage and explain its purpose.

(c) (i) Most candidates were able to correctly convert the denary number to binary and showed their
working.

(ii) Many candidates were able to convert the hexadecimal numbers to binary.

(d) Many candidates were able to correct add together the two binary values. Candidates are
reminded that their working should be shown as binary addition. Candidates who convert the binary
numbers to denary, add them, then convert the answer to binary did not show their working in the
binary addition.

(e) Some candidates were able to correctly covert the two’s complement binary value. Some
candidates simply converted the binary value as though it was not a two’s complement value.

Question 2

(a) Many candidates were able to correctly state the ef f ect of the compression on the report f ile.

(b) Many candidates were able to give two suitable benefits of compressing the file before emailing it.
Some candidates gave vague descriptions such as it would be f aster to email. Candidates are
reminded to make sure they use technical language in their responses.

(c) Some candidates were able to state why lossy was not suitable. Many candidates just provided a
description of what lossy or lossless compression is rather than providing inf ormation about why
lossy is not suitable.

(d) (i) Candidates generally understood that Unicode is an example of a character set.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

(ii) Some candidates were able to give advantages for the use of Unicode. However, some candidates
just gave a difference between the two, for example, they stated that Unicode uses more bits than
ASCII but did not give the advantage of this.

(iii) Some candidates were able to give a suitable drawback. However, so me candidates gave a
dif f erence such as Unicode using more bits, but did not state the disadvantage of this.

(e) (i) Many candidates were able to circle the correct three options. The most common incorrect answers
were payload and trailer.

(ii) Most candidates were able to tick the correct option. The most common incorrect answer was
packet transf erring.

(iii) Many candidates were able to identify the correct hardware device. The most common incorrect
answer given was internet service provider.

(f) (i) Many candidates were able to accurately explain how echo check is used to check for errors in the
email data.

(ii) Few candidates were able to accurate state why the mismatch in the values would show an error
had occurred. Many candidates simply repeated the question stating that mismatching values
shows an error has occurred; they did not explain why.

(g) (i) Many candidates were able to give the reason why the email data was encrypted. Some
candidates have a misconception that encrypting data stops the data f rom being stolen.
Candidates need to understand that encrypting data does not stop the data being stolen; it will just
be meaningless to the person who steals it.

(ii) Many candidates were able to give a similarity between the two types of encryption.

(iii) Some candidates were able to give two differences between the two types of encryption. Some
candidates only referred to one type of encryption. For example, stating that symmetric encryption
only uses one key, but did not continue to refer to how this compares to asymmetric encryption.

Question 3

(a) Many candidates were able to give two other correct suitable registers.

(b) Few candidates were able to draw an accurate and technical diagram of the decode stage of the
FDE cycle. Many candidates drew either the fetch stage or the execute stage. Candidates need to
have a greater understanding of what happens at the decode stage of the cycle.

Question 4

Many candidates were able to complete the table with the correct terms and descriptions.

Question 5

(a) Many candidates showed a good understanding of what is meant by an automated system.

(b) Many candidates were able to describe the role of the microprocessor in the system. Some
candidates described the operation of the whole system, which was not necessary. The question
only required the role of the microprocessor.

(c) Most candidates were able to give two correct benefits of the system to the f armer. A wide variety
of benef its was seen f rom candidates.

(d) Few candidates were able to explain how the plough would make use of AI. Many candidates
simply described what is meant by AI. Candidates need to have a better understanding of how AI is
used in a variety of dif f erent contexts.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

Question 6

(a) Many candidates were able to complete the paragraph with the correct missing terms.

(b) Many candidates were able to give three correct examples of the use of cookies.

Question 7

Few candidates were able to explain the purpose of the IDE. Most candidates simply listed features that can
be f ound in an IDE.

© 2024
 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Paper 2210/22
Algorithms, Programming and Logic

Key messages

Candidates need to carefully read the questions before answering them and their answers must ref er to the
given context.

Candidates who responded using the correct pseudocode syntax as def ined in the syllabus, answered
pseudocode questions accurately.

Candidates who answered questions appropriately in terms of the command word used were able to achieve
the highest marks, for example: questions beginning with explain require more detail than those beginning
with state. In addition, explain type questions usually require an explanation of how something is done,
rather than a simple description of what is done.

General comments

Candidates demonstrated a good overall understanding of the requirements of most of the question paper.

Candidates are reminded that when answering the f inal programming question, they should read the
scenario through to the end before they begin to write their solutions. Candidates do not need to declare
variables and arrays unless it is stated in the scenario that they need to do this. Candidates should proceed
straight to the writing of the program, concentrating their ef f orts on the given tasks. Candidates must,
however, ensure that any variables and arrays def ined or stated in the scenario are used and t hat they
include any necessary initialisation.

Comments on specific questions

Question 1

The majority candidates were aware that structure diagrams are an alternative method of representing a
solution to a problem.

Question 2

Most candidates understood that an IF statement is an example of a selection statement.

Question 3

(a) The majority of candidates were able to match each f lowchart symbol with its correct purpose.

(b) Many candidates achieved some marks f or their construction of a f lowchart to meet the
requirements stated in the question. A significant number of these candidates demonstrated a good
understanding of f lowchart symbols and f lowchart structure.

Question 4

(a) Most candidates were able to identify and correct at least one of the errors in the given algorithm
with a high proportion of these candidates identif ying more than one. Candidates with a good
understanding of pseudocode and the bubble sort algorithm were able to correct most of the errors.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

(b) The majority of candidates found this question difficult. Some candidates were able to explain that
the algorithm used a flag to stop the execution of the algorithm once it was in order, and/or the
inner loop reduced its upper limit so that already sorted data was not checked again.

Question 5

(a) The majority of candidates were able to identify a stage in the program development life cycle other
than analysis, f or example: design, coding or testing.

(b) This question was answered well, with most candidates identifying abstraction and decomposition
as occurring during analysis. Other correct points given included correct expansions on the
meaning of abstraction or the inclusion of statements such as identification of the problem and/or
identif ication of the requirements of the solution to the problem.

Question 6

Many candidates correctly identified a verification check such as visual check or double entry check. Some
of these candidates expanded correctly to outline how their check would work. A signif icant number of
candidates incorrectly named validation checks such as range check or presence check .

Question 7

(a) Candidates generally f ound it challenging to correctly complete the trace table. A signif icant
number of candidates did correctly complete the first column with some correctly completing the
whole trace table.

(b) A minority of candidates correctly identif ied the purpose of the algorithm.

(c) A significant number of candidates correctly identified the fact that the given input data could lead
to an endless loop because the terminal condition f or the loop (1) would never be reached.

Question 8

A significant number of candidates either named types of test data or just gave any values of test data that
could be either normal or abnormal data. The question asked for test data that tested the whole number limit
of 80, so boundary data was required. In this case, 80 is the highest acceptable value and 81 is the f irst
rejected value. Some candidates did answer this question correctly in whole or in part.

Question 9

(a) Most candidates were able to correctly draw and connect the logic gates.

(b) There was a f ull range of marks for this question with most candidates achieving at least one mark.

Question 10

There were a mixed set of responses for this question with some very good algorithms provided. Candidates
who had a good understanding of string handling, f ile handling and the pseudocode as presented in the
syllabus, achieved the best marks. Some of these candidates achieved f ull or near f ull marks.

Question 11

(a) The majority of candidates correctly stated that the database table had 11 fields and 15 records. A
small number of candidates reversed these two values incorrectly identifying the f ields as records
and vice versa.

(b) Most candidates understood that the data in the Type field was not unique for all records, so could
not be the primary key.

(c) Candidates generally named appropriate fields that would contain each of the given types of data.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

(d) The majority of candidates correctly wrote down the output of the given structured query language
(SQL) statement. The most common error on this question was to include extra data in the
response that was not required, such as additional punctuation. Candidates who reproduced the
data f rom the database table to match the query, in the same order as it appeared in the table,
achieved all three marks.

Question 12

Candidates were required to complete an extended program using pseudocode, Python, Java or VB.NET to
meet a set of requirements given in a scenario. This scenario required a program to store the names and
dimensions of up to 20 rooms for a house and calculate the area of each room and a range of other statistics
that would then be printed.

There was a wide range of good responses, with most using either pseudocode or Python.

Candidates whose responses closely matched the requirements stated in the scenario, ensuring that all
points were f ully covered, achieved the highest marks.

The best responses included comments to explain what each part or sub part of the solution was doing and
used input prompts and appropriate messages to accompany all outputs.

The best responses also correctly used the data structures given in the scenario in the way they were
expected to be used, as stated in the scenario; in this case a one-dimensional (1D) array Rooms(), a two-
dimensional (2D) array Dimensions() and a variable Number f or the number of rooms.

Many candidates demonstrated good computational thinking skills by writing algorithms to cover all or most
of the required tasks. Many candidates also spent time declaring arrays and variables, which was not
required f or this question. Marks are only given f or responses that cover all the requirements, with the
addition of comments and any messaging, as stated earlier.

It is also important to ensure that correct initialisation of variables is present, when necessary, to ensure that
the candidate’s solution would achieve the correct output. In this case, a maximum and minimum are
required, to find the largest and smallest rooms, so those variables do need to be initialised appropriately. In
addition, totalling routines are used to find the total area of the house to enable the average room size to be
calculated. It is also important that variables used here are initialised bef ore they are used.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Paper 2210/23
Algorithms, Programming and Logic

Key messages

Candidates were able to demonstrate a good level of understanding of algorithms and programming. It would
be benef icial to candidates to fully understand the published pseudocode within the syllabus as this is the
basis f or many of the questions within the paper.

General comments

Candidates using additional pages are reminded to clearly indicate the question for which they are providing
a f urther response. In these, candidates need to clearly write their name and candidate number on any
additional booklets.

Comments on specific questions

Question 1

Most candidates were able to correctly identif y the correct check.

Question 2

Most candidates were able to correctly identif y the correct method.

Question 3

Most candidates identif ied the correct symbols f or all f our logic gates.

Question 4

Most candidates correctly identif ied f our or f ive of the database terms with a f ew identif ying all six.

Question 5

A minority of candidates correctly identified the two other stages of the program development lif e cycle.

Question 6

(a) A significant number of candidates did not attempt this question. Many achieved the mark f or the
assignment of the variable. A f ew correctly identif ied the addition. A small number correctly
identified the average calculation. Other candidates did not subtract one from C or did not include
any parentheses.

(b) Only a f ew candidates achieved all the marks as this was a follow on f rom the previous question
requiring the candidates to output the values from the algorithm. Incorrectly using program code
was used by a f ew as this was a pseudocode question.

(c) Only a f ew candidates used meaningful identifiers for the array and the variables. Many candidates
used Array as the identif ier f or the array, which is not meaningf ul.

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 Cambridge Ordinary Level
2210 Computer Science November 2024
Principal Examiner Report f or Teachers

Question 7

A minority of candidates achieved full credit for this question. Each type of test needed the name, the actual
data and whether the data would be accepted or rejected. Boundary data test needs two pieces of data and
an indication that one would be accepted, and one rejected.

Question 8

The truth table question was answered well by most candidates, achieving three or f our marks.

Question 9

Most candidates correctly identif ied the errors. Many candidates identif ied the same error twice with the
switching of the Yes and No on one of the decision boxes.

Question 10

(a) A minority of candidates achieved f our or f ive marks f or correctly entering the data and stating
whether it would be accepted or rejected. Many candidates used quotation marks on the output,
which is incorrect. When tracing an algorithm, each time a variable has a value assigned to it; this
needs to be recorded in the trace table.

(b) Most candidates achieved one or two marks, with some scoring full marks. The password needed
to be between 8 and 20 characters inclusive. Most candidates identif ied greater than 8 and less
than 20.

Question 11

(a) Most candidates correctly identified at least one of the SQL statement outputs. Punctuation marks
should not be in the output f rom an SQL statement.

(b) (i) Many candidates wrote down the correct SQL statement.

(ii) A minority of candidates identified another field that could have been used in the WHERE section
of the SQL. This was an explain question and not just the use of SQL.

Question 12

Candidates were expected to meet three requirements. Requirement 1 was to input each member’s picked
weight and to use validation to ensure the data was sensible. Requirement 2 was to sort the members picked
weight and name in descending order of weight. Requirement 3 was to output the names and the picked
weights of the members who finished with the two heaviest weights and also to store the members names
who will receive a certif icate.

Requirement 1 was attempted by most of the candidates. Many candidates correctly used the arrays given
in the question. Most candidates only inputted data for one member and not the number of members in the
group. Most of the candidates who used the arrays given, did not use an index with the array or use a loop to
input all the members times. Those who attempted the requirement applied some f orm of validation on the
weight with a f ew using validation on the name as input, but this was not a requirement of the question.

Requirements 2 was attempted by a minority of candidates. Most of these candidates did not correctly use a
bubble sort to sort the times and names. Some attempted the bubble sort but they only used one loop. Some
candidates used the min/max method to sort the times but only did this once; it would have required two of
these. Many candidates added the SQL term ASC to their code f or sorting.

Requirement 3 was attempted well by most candidates. A minority chose the correct index of the two highest
weights when outputting the names and picked weights of the members. Most candidates correctly identified
members who achieved over 3 kg but did not store the names in the given array.

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