UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2018/2019
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
BSD1208 COMPUTATIONAL THINKING THEORY
DATE: DECEMBER, 2018 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE
a) Define the following terms (5 Marks)
i) Computation:
ii) Thinking:
iii) Computational Thinking
iv) Algorithm
v) Computer programming
b) Explain the FIVE approaches to Computational Thinking (10 Marks)
c) Explain FOUR of the basic Computational thinking concepts (8 Marks)
d) A program is to read payroll records that includes; employee-number, monthly basic
salary, monthly house allowance, monthly medical allowance, and monthly tax rate,
Construct a Input Process Output(IPO) to compute and display his/her employee-number
monthly basic salary, monthly house allowance, monthly medical allowance, and monthly
tax rate, and his/her monthly net income. Where;
monthly net income = (basic salary + house allowance + medical allowance )- (basic
salary X tax rate) (7 Marks)
QUESTION TWO
a) i) Differentiate between Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking AND state the elements
of each (6 Marks)
ii) Describe FOUR Positive Attitudes that Lead to Creativity (8 Marks)
b) Construct a problem analysis chart (PAC) to compute and display the total surface area of
a solid cuboid after receiving it length, width, and height of the cuboid from the user
Total Area = 2(lw + lh + wh) (6 Marks)
QUESTION THREE
a) Explain FOUR characteristics of a good algorithm (8 Marks)
b) Describe the following concepts with respect to algorithm analysis (4 Marks)
i) Time complexity
ii) Space complexity
c) Construct an algorithm in form of flowchart to depict the logic of the solution to the
following problem
(8 Marks)
A program is required that will captures the name and the rank status(ordinary employee
or supervisor) of 30 employee of a company as input and then calculate and displays their
gross income.
The gross income is calculated on the basis of a basic salary of Ksh.18000.00 by default,
plus an allowance is applied to it based on the following status criteria;
Ordinary employee gets 15% of the basic salary
supervisor get 22 % of the basic salary
QUESTION FOUR
a) With aid of well labeled diagram explain the steps in designing and implementing an
algorithm (14 Marks)
b) Construct a problem analysis chart (PAC) that asks a user to enter the distance of a trip in
Km, the Km per Litter estimate for the user’s car, and the average cost of a Litter of fuel.
Calculate and display the number of Litters of fuel needed and the estimated cost of the
trip. (6 Marks)
QUESTION FIVE
a) With the aid of diagrams, discus the three types of program execution controls available in
a structured programming language (9 Marks)
b) Write down an algorithmic pseudo-code and draw a corresponding flowchart to receive
three numbers one-by-one, find and print the largest of three numbers (11 Marks)
