SEE Model Paper 1
Full marks: 50Time: 2 hours
All questions are compulsory.
A full practice run of the SEE Computer Science theory paper: 50 marks in 2 hours, every question compulsory. Work out on paper what each program in a question does, as in the exam hall: those programs have no Run button. The programs in the answers do run.
A practice paper by Science Playground, made to CDC’s Specification Grid, Computer Science, Grade 10. Not an official CDC or NEB paper; the real SEE may differ.
Write your answers on paper first. Then open each answer and its marking scheme, and give yourself one mark for each point you got. In multiple choice, your first choice counts.
Section A
10 × 1 = 10Choose the correct option for each of the following questions.
How many bits long is an IPv6 address?
Pick an answer to see why.
The computer lab of a school in Ilam had its 20 computers joined by a hub. The hub is replaced by a switch, and the network becomes faster. Why?
Pick an answer to see why.
Bishnu downloads a 1,500 MB video lesson over a connection whose throughput is 50 Mbps. How long does it take, at best?
Pick an answer to see why.
What is a single row of a database table, holding all the data about one student, called?
Pick an answer to see why.
A trekking agency in Solukhumbu keeps its guides in a table named guides:
| ID | Name | Age |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pasang | 34 |
| 2 | Nima | 29 |
| 3 | Dawa | 41 |
| 4 | Lhakpa | 38 |
| 5 | Tashi | 26 |
How many rows does this query return?
SELECT Name FROM guidesWHERE Name LIKE '_a%';Pick an answer to see why.
Which text file format stores text together with its font, size and color, and shows control words such as \b when it is opened in Notepad?
Pick an answer to see why.
Sunita makes a 2D animation of a kite flying for 5 seconds at 24 frames per second. She draws 6 keyframes, and the computer fills in all the other frames. How many in-betweens does the computer make?
Pick an answer to see why.
In Python’s exception handling, which block runs every time, whether an error happened in the try block or not?
Pick an answer to see why.
A shop in Butwal works out its staff’s pay with this program:
bonus = 500def pay_with_bonus(salary): bonus = 1000 return salary + bonusprint(pay_with_bonus(20000), bonus)Which is the correct output, with the right reason?
Pick an answer to see why.
For her project on mountains, Rekha asks a chatbot the height of Kanchenjunga. It answers at once, “Kanchenjunga is 8,848 meters high.” What should she do?
Pick an answer to see why.
Section B
10 × 2 = 20Write short answers to the following questions.
Differentiate between a client–server network and a peer-to-peer network with any two points.
Answer
| Client–server network | Peer-to-peer network |
|---|---|
| One or more powerful computers, the servers, provide services (files, printing, email) and the other computers, the clients, use them. | Every computer is equal: each can share its own files and printer and use the others’; there is no server. |
| Security is better and backup is easy, because resources and users are managed in one place, on the server. | Security is weaker and backups are scattered, because each computer is set up on its own. |
| It needs a trained administrator, and if the server fails, its services stop for everyone. | No administrator is needed, and one computer’s failure doesn’t stop the others. |
| Suits large organizations: a bank, a college. | Suits a few computers: a small office or a home. |
(Any two.)
Marking scheme
- One correct difference, with both sides (e.g. servers give services to clients / all computers are equal, no server).
- A second correct difference (e.g. security and backup managed centrally / each computer on its own; an administrator needed / none needed).
Anisha types ipconfig on her laptop at home and sees these lines:
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.23Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1- a.Is her laptop’s IPv4 address private or public? Give a reason. (1)
- b.Her laptop sends one message to a printer at 192.168.1.40 and another to a website’s server at 142.250.67.14. Which message goes through the default gateway? Why? (1)
Answer
- a.Private. Addresses starting 192.168 are one of the ranges kept for use inside homes and offices; they never appear on the internet itself.
- b.The message to the website’s server. The subnet mask 255.255.255.0 says the first three numbers are the network part. The printer’s address starts 192.168.1, the same network as the laptop, so the laptop sends to it directly. 142.250.67 is a different network, so the message goes to the default gateway, the router, which sends it on towards the internet.
Marking scheme
- a. Private, because 192.168.x.x is a private range used only inside homes and offices.
- b. The message to 142.250.67.14, because its network part differs from the laptop’s (192.168.1), so it must go through the router.
Write any two MySQL constraints and what each one does.
Answer
Any two of:
- PRIMARY KEY: the column identifies each row; no two rows may have the same value, and it can’t be NULL.
- FOREIGN KEY: links the column to the primary key of another table; only values found there are allowed.
- NOT NULL: the column can’t be left empty.
- UNIQUE: every value in the column must be different (NULL is allowed).
- CHECK: every value must pass a condition, such as
Marks BETWEEN 0 AND 100. - DEFAULT: gives the column a value automatically when a new row leaves it out.
Marking scheme
- One constraint named with what it does (e.g. NOT NULL: the column can’t be empty).
- A second constraint named with what it does (e.g. CHECK: every value must pass a condition).
Ramesh’s video of a football match looks jerky, as if the players jump from place to place. Sabina’s video of the same match is smooth, but looks blurred and blocky when shown on the school’s big screen. Which property of video is too low in each video? Explain what each property means.
Answer
- Ramesh’s video has too low a frame rate: the number of frames (still pictures) shown each second, in frames per second (fps). With too few frames each second, the eye sees the separate pictures instead of smooth motion; sport needs 50 or 60 fps.
- Sabina’s video has too low a resolution: the number of pixels in each frame, width × height, such as 1280 × 720. With few pixels, a frame shown large on a big screen can’t show fine detail, so it looks blurred or blocky.
Marking scheme
- Ramesh: low frame rate, the number of frames shown each second (fps), which decides how smooth motion looks.
- Sabina: low resolution, the number of pixels in a frame (width × height), which decides how much detail it shows.
A school in Gorkha holds a science fair. The ticket is Rs 50 for a child under 12 years and Rs 100 for everyone else. Write a Python program with a user-defined function ticket_price(age) that returns the price of a ticket. The program should ask for a visitor’s age and print the price.
Answer
def ticket_price(age): if age < 12: return 50 else: return 100 age = int(input("Enter the visitor's age: "))print("Ticket price: Rs", ticket_price(age))Output
Enter the visitor's age: 9Ticket price: Rs 50Lines 1 to 5 define the function, which returns 50 or 100; line 7 reads the age as a whole number, and line 8 calls the function with it and prints the price it returns.
Marking scheme
- The function
ticket_price(age)defined withdef, returning 50 under 12 and 100 otherwise (any working program). - The age read with
int(input()), the function called with it, and the price printed.
An e-rickshaw service in Pokhara works out its fares with this program. Write its output.
def fare(km, rate=30): return km * rate print(fare(5))print(fare(rate=40, km=3))Answer
Output
150120In fare(5), only km is given, so rate takes its default value, 30: 5 × 30 = 150. In fare(rate=40, km=3), both are given as keyword arguments, so their order doesn’t matter: 3 × 40 = 120.
Marking scheme
- 150 (the default rate, 30, is used).
- 120 (keyword arguments: km = 3, rate = 40).
Kabita’s class teacher wants a record of how many students come each day. Kabita wrote this program and runs it once every day, but at the end of the week attendance.txt holds only the last day’s number. Find the mistake and correct it.
present = input("Students present today: ")f = open("attendance.txt", "w")f.write(present + "\n")f.close()Answer
The mistake is on line 2: the file is opened in write mode, "w", which wipes everything in the file the moment it is opened. So each day’s run deletes the earlier days’ numbers and writes only today’s.
The correction is to open it in append mode, "a", which keeps what is already in the file and adds to its end (and creates the file on the first day):
present = input("Students present today: ")f = open("attendance.txt", "a")f.write(present + "\n")f.close()Output
Students present today: 38Marking scheme
- The mistake: mode
"w"on line 2 empties the file each time it is opened, so earlier days are lost. - The correction: open the file in append mode,
open("attendance.txt", "a").
Differentiate between virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), with an example of each.
Answer
- Virtual reality replaces what you see with a computer-made world, usually through a headset that covers the eyes and follows your head. Example: walking around the Solar System, or a pilot practicing in a flight simulator.
- Augmented reality shows digital pictures and information on top of the real world, through a phone’s camera or special glasses; the real view stays. Example: an app that writes the names of the peaks of the Annapurna range on the phone’s camera picture, or a filter that puts sunglasses on your face.
Marking scheme
- VR: a fully computer-made world that replaces the real view (through a headset), with an example.
- AR: digital information added on top of the real view (through a phone camera or glasses), with an example.
Name the kind of e-governance (G2C, G2B, G2G or G2E) in each of these, and give a reason.
- a.A hotel in Pokhara files its tax online with the Inland Revenue Department. (1)
- b.The Ministry of Education sends the list of schools’ grants to every municipality through an online system. (1)
Answer
- a.G2B (government to business): the government is dealing with a business, the hotel, over its tax.
- b.G2G (government to government): one office of government, the ministry, shares data with other levels of government, the municipalities.
Marking scheme
- a. G2B, because the government deals with a business (the hotel).
- b. G2G, because it is between offices and levels of government.
Sunrise School in Dhulikhel has no IT staff, and wants to put its students’ results online. It can either (i) rent a virtual server from a cloud company and install the operating system and a results program itself, or (ii) pay a monthly fee to use a ready-made online results app. Name the cloud service in each choice. Which would you recommend for this school? Give a reason.
Answer
Choice (i) is IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): the school rents only the bare hardware and installs and manages everything on it. Choice (ii) is SaaS (Software as a Service): complete software used over the internet, which the provider runs and updates.
Recommended: SaaS. The school has nobody to install, update and secure an operating system and a program on a server; with SaaS the provider does all of that, and the school only enters and checks its results. (The school still looks after its own data: who can see it, and a copy of it.)
Marking scheme
- Names both: (i) IaaS, (ii) SaaS.
- Recommends SaaS with a sound reason (no IT staff to install and manage a server; the provider runs and updates it).
Section C
5 × 4 = 20Write long answers to the following questions.
A school in Kavre is setting up a new computer lab of 20 computers.
- a.What is network topology? (1)
- b.Compare the star topology and the bus topology in two ways: what happens when one cable breaks, and how much cable each needs. (2)
- c.Which of the two would you choose for the lab? Give a reason. (1)
Answer
a. Network topology is the pattern in which the computers and devices of a network are connected: its shape (bus, star, ring, hybrid).
b.
| Star topology | Bus topology | |
|---|---|---|
| One cable breaks | Only the computer on that cable is cut off; the rest keep working. | The whole network stops, and the fault is hard to find. |
| Cable needed | More: every computer has its own cable to the central switch. | Less: all the computers share one cable, the bus. |
c. Star, with a switch in the middle. A broken cable or a faulty computer affects only one computer and is easy to find, so the lab keeps running; the switch also lets several computers talk at once at full speed. (Almost every LAN today is a star; bus is an older, cheaper shape.)
Marking scheme
- a. Topology: the pattern (shape) in which a network’s computers and devices are connected.
- b. One broken cable: star loses only that computer; bus stops the whole network.
- b. Cable: star needs more (a cable for each computer to the switch); bus needs less (one shared cable).
- c. Star, with a reason (a fault affects one computer and is easy to find; faster with a switch).
- a.What is DDL? Write any two DDL commands with what each one does. (2)
- b.What is DML? Write any two DML commands with what each one does. (2)
Answer
a. DDL (Data Definition Language) is the part of SQL that defines and changes the structure of a database: its databases, tables and columns. Any two of:
CREATE: makes a new database or table;ALTER: changes the structure of an existing table, such as adding, deleting or changing a column;DROP: deletes a table or a whole database, structure and data, for good;TRUNCATE: deletes all the rows of a table but keeps the empty table;RENAME: gives a table a new name.
b. DML (Data Manipulation Language) is the part of SQL that works with the data inside the tables. Any two of:
INSERT: adds new records (rows) to a table;SELECT: retrieves data from one or more tables;UPDATE: changes data already in a table;DELETE: removes records from a table.
Marking scheme
- a. DDL: the part of SQL that defines or changes the structure of a database (its tables and columns).
- a. Two DDL commands with what each does (e.g. CREATE makes a table; ALTER changes its structure).
- b. DML: the part of SQL that works with the data in the tables.
- b. Two DML commands with what each does (e.g. INSERT adds rows; UPDATE changes data).
Shreya records herself singing a folk song for a competition, edits out a cough and a long pause, and then sends the finished song to the organizers by WhatsApp.
- a.Her editor shows the song as an audio waveform. What do the height of the waves and the width of each wave show? (2)
- b.Which audio format should she use while recording and editing, and which to send the song? Give a reason for each. (2)
Answer
- a.The height of a wave, its amplitude, shows how loud the sound is: a bigger vibration makes a taller wave. The width of one wave on the graph is the time it takes, its period; the narrower the waves, the more of them each second (a higher frequency), and the higher the pitch of the note.
- b.While recording and editing: WAV, because it usually stores the sound uncompressed, exactly as recorded, so nothing is lost while she cuts and edits it. To send it: MP3 (or AAC), because it compresses the sound to about a tenth of the size, small enough to send quickly over the internet, and plays almost everywhere.
Marking scheme
- a. Height (amplitude): how loud the sound is.
- a. Width of a wave (period): how quickly it vibrates; narrower waves, higher frequency and pitch.
- b. WAV for recording and editing, because it is uncompressed and keeps the sound exactly.
- b. MP3 or AAC for sending, because it is compressed into a much smaller file.
A tea stall in Bandipur keeps the number of cups of tea it sells each day in a file, chiya_sales.csv:
chiya_sales.csv
Day,CupsSun,120Mon,95Tue,110Wed,130Thu,105Fri,150- a.Write a Python program using the Pandas library that reads the file and prints the total number of cups sold in the week and the highest number sold in a day. (2)
- b.Add lines to the program to draw a bar chart of the cups sold each day using Matplotlib, with a title and labels on both axes. (2)
Answer
import pandas as pdimport matplotlib.pyplot as plt df = pd.read_csv("chiya_sales.csv")print("Total cups this week:", df['Cups'].sum())print("Most cups in a day:", df['Cups'].max()) plt.bar(df['Day'], df['Cups'])plt.title("Cups of tea sold each day")plt.xlabel("Day")plt.ylabel("Cups")plt.show()Output
Total cups this week: 710Most cups in a day: 150- a.Line 4 reads the CSV file into a DataFrame;
df['Cups']is the Cups column, whosesum()is the week’s total andmax()the highest day. - b.Lines 8 to 12 draw the chart:
plt.bar()takes the days for the bars and the cups for their heights,title(),xlabel()andylabel()label it, andshow()displays it.
Marking scheme
- a. Pandas imported and the file read with
pd.read_csv("chiya_sales.csv"). - a. The total and the highest printed with
df['Cups'].sum()anddf['Cups'].max()(or any working way). - b. Matplotlib imported and the bar chart drawn with
plt.bar(df['Day'], df['Cups']). - b. A title and both axis labels added, and the chart shown with
plt.show().
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
A hospital in Dharan plans to use an AI system that looks at patients’ chest X-rays and marks the ones that may show tuberculosis (TB). The system learned from 100,000 X-rays, each already marked “TB” or “no TB” by doctors, all of them from hospitals in other countries. The company will keep copies of the hospital’s X-rays on its own servers to improve the system.
- a.Is this supervised or unsupervised learning? Give a reason. (1)
- b.Write two problems of ethics the hospital should think about before using the system. (2)
- c.Suggest one way to use the system safely. (1)
Answer
- a.Supervised learning, because the system learned from labeled data: every training X-ray came with the right answer, “TB” or “no TB”, given by doctors.
- b.Any two:
- Bias: all its training X-rays came from other countries, so it may work less well for patients in Nepal (different machines, different patients), missing TB in some or wrongly marking others.
- Privacy: patients’ X-rays are personal medical data; keeping copies on the company’s servers, perhaps abroad, could leak or misuse them, so patients should know and agree.
- Security: the stored X-rays and the system itself could be hacked, or its data changed (data poisoning), so it decides wrongly.
c. Any one: a doctor checks every result before anything is decided, so the AI only helps; first test it on X-rays of patients in Nepal whose results are known, and train it further on them if needed; remove names and details from the X-rays before they leave the hospital, with the patients’ consent.
Marking scheme
- a. Supervised, because it learned from X-rays labeled “TB” or “no TB”.
- b. A first ethical problem with its reason (e.g. bias: trained only on X-rays from abroad).
- b. A second (e.g. privacy: patients’ X-rays kept on the company’s servers).
- c. One sensible safeguard (e.g. a doctor checks every result; test it first on X-rays from Nepal).
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