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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What were the two essential elements of Shannon's simple communication model?
(a) Circuit and grid.
(b) Grid and network.
(c) Two relay switches.
(d) A transmitter and a receiver.

2. What caused the errors that were contained in the tables of logarithms that had to be calculated themselves?
(a) Printing errors.
(b) Calculations.
(c) Calculations and printing errors.
(d) Under-educated workers.

3. How was "A Table Alphabeticall" intended to help people?
(a) To better understand the use of words.
(b) To understand the alphabets of the world.
(c) To learn the history of language.
(d) The learn the alphabet.

4. Each square of Turing's imaginary machine would have what coding?
(a) A 0 or a 1.
(b) Circuitry.
(c) Programming.
(d) Relay switches.

5. Before "A Table Alphabeticall", how were most catalogs and word lists arranged?
(a) By order of the philosophers.
(b) By topic.
(c) By frequency of use.
(d) By order of the king's scribe.

6. What word book by James Murray was first published in 1879?
(a) Oxford English Dictionary.
(b) A Table Alphabeticall.
(c) The First Language.
(d) The Birth of Writing.

7. What was the small device intended to replace bulky vacuum tubes perfected by Bell Laboratories called?
(a) The circuit.
(b) The grid.
(c) The transistor.
(d) The relay.

8. How many words were contained in "A Table Alphabeticall?"
(a) 2,500.
(b) 100,000.
(c) 50,000.
(d) 22,278.

9. What did Alan Turing reduce human thought to?
(a) 0s and 1s.
(b) Numbers.
(c) Symbols.
(d) Its basic elements.

10. Who first thought of constructing a machine that could calculate logarithms?
(a) John Napier.
(b) Issac Newton.
(c) Galileo.
(d) Charles Babbage.

11. What language do the drums of what is now Zaire mimic?
(a) Swahili
(b) Zulu.
(c) Bantu.
(d) Kele.

12. Claude Shannon and Alan Turing were working on separate cryptography project and shared what astounding possibility?
(a) That machines could take over the human race.
(b) That machines could think.
(c) That machines could have emotions.
(d) That machines could cure disease.

13. Eliminating noise in Shannon's model meant looking at language in terms of what factor?
(a) Randomness.
(b) Frequency.
(c) Possibility.
(d) Probability.

14. What were conflicting statements created by the Principia Mathematica called?
(a) False positives.
(b) Circular arguments.
(c) Recursive.
(d) Non-conclusive results.

15. Who was the sixth editor of the Oxford English Dictionary?
(a) John Simpson.
(b) Mark Twain.
(c) Lord Byron.
(d) Thomas Edison.

Short Answer Questions

1. What theory was not only useful in practical communications, but had applications in psychology, biology, and physics?

2. Prior to the electric telegraph, an invention by the same name was created by Claude Chappe and his brothers during what conflict?

3. What word book by Robert Cawdrey was published first in 1604?

4. By 1930, what had replaced the telegraph as the most advanced means of communication?

5. In the prologue to "The Information", what year does Gleick identify as a crucial year in the history of information and computing?

(see the answer keys)

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