Computer Science study guides

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.1 Fundamentals of programming. Covers the built-in and composite data types, the three basic constructs, arithmetic and logical operations, subroutines, parameters, scope and recursion, and the principles of object-oriented programming.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.10 Fundamentals of databases. Covers conceptual data modelling and ER diagrams, relational databases with primary and foreign keys, normalisation to third normal form, SQL queries and data modification, and transaction processing with the ACID properties.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.2 Fundamentals of data structures. Covers arrays and records, queues, stacks, graphs, trees, hash tables and dictionaries, with how each works, its operations, and when to use it.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.3 Fundamentals of algorithms. Covers graph and tree traversal, linear and binary search, bubble and merge sort, Dijkstra's shortest path, and Big-O time and space complexity with the common orders of growth.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.4 Theory of computation. Covers abstraction and automation, finite state machines, regular expressions and context-free languages, Turing machines, and the classification of algorithms into tractable, intractable and non-computable problems.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.5 Fundamentals of data representation. Covers number systems and base conversion, signed binary in two's complement, fixed and floating point, bits and bytes, character encoding, representing images and sound, and data compression and encryption.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.6 Fundamentals of computer systems. Covers hardware and software and the operating system, logic gates and Boolean algebra, the classification of programming languages, and the types of program translation including the stages of compilation.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.7 Computer organisation and architecture. Covers the internal hardware and buses, the stored program concept and Von Neumann and Harvard architectures, the processor components and fetch-execute cycle, addressing modes, and secondary storage.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to 4.8 Communication and networking. Covers serial and parallel transmission, LANs, WANs and topologies, wireless networking, the internet and the TCP/IP model, network security and encryption, and the client-server, peer-to-peer and web models.

A deep-dive AQA A-Level Computer Science guide to the consequences of computing and functional programming. Covers the moral, ethical, legal and cultural issues raised by computing and the relevant UK legislation, and the functional programming paradigm including first-class functions, composition, and map, filter and reduce.