AP Computer Science Principles Exam Review

Flashcards for vocabulary review for the AP Computer Science Principles Exam.

Hardware

The physical components of a computing device.

Software

The instructions in a programming language to the computing device.

Moore’s Law

States that the size of transistors halves every two years while the cost also halves every two years.

Function of a program

How a program behaves during execution and is usually described by how the user interacts with it.

Purpose of a program

The goal or the motivation for writing a program.

Program’s specification

Defines the requirements for the program.

Collaboration

A learned skill that includes communication, consensus building, conflict resolution, and negotiation.

Incremental development process

Breaks the problem into smaller pieces and makes sure each piece works before adding it to the whole.

Iterative development process

Requires refinement and revision based on feedback, testing, or reflection throughout the process.

Program documentation

A written description of the function of a code segment, event, procedure, or program and how it was developed.

Comments

A form of program documentation written into the program that do not affect how the program runs.

Logic error

A mistake in the algorithm or program that causes it to behave incorrectly or unexpectedly.

Syntax error

A mistake in the program where the rules of the programming language are not followed.

Runtime error

A mistake in the program that occurs during the execution of a program.

Program input

Data sent to a computer for processing by a program, which can come in a variety of forms, such as tactile, audio, visual, or text.

Event

The action that supplies input data to a program.

Program output

Any data sent from a program to a device, which can come in a variety of forms, such as tactile, audio, visual, or text.

Bit

A single binary digit and is either 0 or 1.

Byte

8 bits

Abstraction

The process of reducing complexity by focusing on the main idea.

Analog signals

Are continuous signals.

Digital signals

Are finite.

Roundoff error

Occurs when decimals (real numbers) are rounded.

Information

The collection of facts and patterns extracted from data.

Cleaning data

A process that makes the data uniform without changing their meaning.

Metadata

Data that describe your data—for example, a picture of you standing in front of a waterfall is data, the location and time the picture was taken are this.

Abstraction

A way to represent essential features without including the background details or explanations.

Procedural abstraction

Provides a name for a process and allows a procedure to be used only knowing what it does, not how it does it.

Abstractions Used on the AP Exam

DISPLAY(expression) is an abstraction that is used on your AP exam to display a value of expression followed by a space; RANDOM(a, b), which evaluates to a random number from a to b inclusive.

Data abstraction

Provides a separation between the abstract properties of a data type and the concrete details of its representation.

Lists

An organized and formatted way of storing and retrieving data. Each element in this can be accessed by its index.

Procedure

A set of code that is referred to by name and can be called (invoked) at any point in a program simply by utilizing the procedure's name.

Heuristic

An approach to a problem that produces a solution that is not guaranteed to be optimal but may be used when techniques that are guaranteed to always find an optimal solution are impractical.

Software library

Contains procedures that may be used in creating new programs.

Application program interfaces (APIs)

Are specifications for how the procedures in a library behave and can be used.

Computing device

A physical artifact that can run a program. Examples include computers, tablets, servers, routers, and smart sensors.

Computing system

A group of computing devices and programs working together for a common purpose.

Computer network

A group of interconnected computing devices capable of sending or receiving data.

Bandwidth of a computer network

The maximum amount of data that can be sent in a fixed amount of time.

Path

A sequence of directly connected computing devices that begins at the sender and ends at the receiver.

Routing

The process of finding a path from sender to receiver.

Protocol

An agreed-upon set of rules that specify the behavior of a system.

Scalability of a system

The capacity for the system to change in size and scale to meet new demands.

Internet protocol (IP)

Is responsible for addressing and routing your online requests.

Transmission control protocol (TCP)

Defines how computers send packets of data to each other.

User datagram protocol (UDP)

Allows computer applications to send messages without checking for missing packets to save on time needed to retransmit missing packets.

Redundancy

The inclusion of extra paths that can mitigate the failure of a system if other components fail.

The internet

Refers to the hardware, is made up of the computers, cables, routers, and many more components that make up the entire network, and it is a global decentralized network connecting millions of computers.

The World Wide Web

Refers to the software used on the internet.

HTTP

A protocol used by the World Wide Web to transmit data.

Sequential computing

A computational model in which operations are performed in order one at a time.

Parallel computing

Involves breaking up a task into smaller, sequential pieces, then those sequential pieces are all executed at the same time, each on its own processor or on a set of computers that have been networked together.

Speedup

Is measured in the time to complete the task sequentially divided by the time to complete the task when done in parallel: Speedup = (sequential run time)/(parallel run time)

Distributed computing

A computational model in which multiple devices are used to run a program.

Digital divide

The difference in access to technology including access to computers and the internet.

Crowdsourcing

A sourcing model in which individuals or organizations obtain goods and services, including ideas and finances, from a large group of internet users.

Citizen science

Scientific research conducted in whole or part by distributed individuals, many of whom may not be scientists, who contribute relevant data to research using their own computing devices.

Creative Commons

A public copyright license that enables the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.

Open Access

Online research output free of any and all restrictions on access and free of many restrictions on use, such as copyright or license restrictions.

Privacy

The right to control data generated by one’s usage of computing innovations and restrict the flow of that data to third parties.

Personally identifiable information (PII)

Information about an individual that identifies, links, relates, or describes that person

Authentication measures

Measures protect devices and information from unauthorized access.

Encryption

Uses cryptographic algorithms to encrypt data.

Malware

Malicious software intended to damage a computing system or take partial control or its operations.

Computer viruses

Malicious programs that can copy themselves and gain access to a computer in an unauthorized way.

Phishing

A technique that directs users to unrelated sites that trick the user into giving personal data.

Keylogging

The use of a program to record every keystroke made by the computer user in order to gain fraudulent access to passwords and other confidential information.

Rogue access point

A wireless access point that gives unauthorized access to secure networks.

Linear Search

An algorithm for finding an element in a list by starting from the beginning and sequentially checking each element until a match is found or the entire list is searched without finding the element.

Binary Search

A search algorithm that halves the number of elements that need to be searched after every comparison by comparing the middle element of the list to the target value, and if unequal, then the half in which the target cannot lie is eliminated.