APCSP Computational Thinking Practices 4

Question 1

A student is designing a program to recommend movies. She decides to ignore factors like the movie's poster color and director's birth year. Which computational thinking practice is she applying?

Accepted Answer

Abstraction

Answer

By ignoring irrelevant details (poster color, birth year) to focus on meaningful features (genre, ratings), she is applying abstraction.

Question 2

A student runs her program and gets a runtime error. She adds print statements at various points to track the value of variables. What technique is she using?

Accepted Answer

Tracing / print debugging

Answer

Adding print statements to monitor variable values at runtime is a common debugging technique called tracing or print debugging.

Question 3

Which of the following BEST illustrates the difference between an algorithm and a program?

Accepted Answer

An algorithm is a step-by-step logical procedure; a program is that procedure implemented in a specific language

Answer

An algorithm is a language-independent logical procedure, while a program is a concrete implementation of that algorithm in a specific programming language.

Question 4

A student builds a simulation of traffic flow and notices the simulation doesn't match real-world data. What should she question FIRST?

Accepted Answer

The assumptions and simplifications built into the model

Answer

When a simulation diverges from reality, the first thing to examine is whether the model's assumptions and simplifications are valid.

Question 5

Which of the following represents an example of 'iterative refinement' in program development?

Accepted Answer

Repeatedly improving a program based on testing and feedback

Answer

Iterative refinement means developing a program in cycles — write, test, evaluate, improve — rather than trying to get it perfect on the first attempt.

(APCSP) AP Computer Science Principles Practice Test

(APCSP) AP Computer Science Principles Practice Test

APCSP Computational Thinking Practices 4