Practice Test Geeks(APCSP) AP Computer Science Principles Practice Test
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Data Representation Flashcards

7 cards from real APCSP practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.

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  1. Which of the following best describes why computers use binary (base-2) rather than decimal (base-10) to store data?

    Answer: Electronic circuits naturally represent two states (on/off), making binary practical

    Electronic components like transistors naturally exist in two stable states (on/off or high/low voltage), making binary the most practical number system for hardware.

  2. How many unique values can be represented using 4 bits?

    Answer: 16

    With n bits you can represent 2^n unique values; 2^4 = 16.

  3. The hexadecimal value 0xFF is equivalent to which decimal value?

    Answer: 255

    F in hex equals 15, so 0xFF = 15×16 + 15 = 240 + 15 = 255.

  4. A color image is stored using 24-bit color (8 bits per channel for red, green, blue). How many distinct colors can it represent?

    Answer: 16,777,216

    24 bits total gives 2^24 = 16,777,216 distinct color combinations.

  5. Which encoding standard assigns a unique number to every character and supports over 140,000 characters from multiple languages and symbol sets?

    Answer: UTF-8 / Unicode

    Unicode (with UTF-8 as a common encoding) assigns code points to over 140,000 characters covering most of the world's writing systems.

  6. What is the decimal equivalent of the binary number 1010?

    Answer: 10

    1×8 + 0×4 + 1×2 + 0×1 = 8 + 0 + 2 + 0 = 10.

  7. Lossless data compression differs from lossy compression in that lossless compression:

    Answer: allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed

    Lossless compression encodes data so the original can be reconstructed exactly, while lossy compression permanently discards some information.