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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. What was Shannon able to theoretically compute by measuring a message in bits? By measuring information in bits, he could theoretically compute the maximum amount of information that could be transmitted through a given channel.
(a) The maximum size a message could be.
(b) The virtual size of the message in microns.
(c) The limits of computing.
(d) The maximum amount of information that could be transmitted.

4. Who developed a system of logic that would not have been possible without writing?
(a) Euripedes.
(b) Plato.
(c) Aristotle.
(d) Socrates.

5. While working on plans for this "analytical engine," Babbage struck an acquaintance with what individual?
(a) Lord Byron.
(b) John Simpson.
(c) Isaac Newton.
(d) Ada Lovelace.

6. in what year did John Carrington, an English missionary, publish "The Talking Drums of Africa"?
(a) 1845
(b) 1902
(c) 1972
(d) 1949

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

8. What machine was constructed by Charles Babbage?
(a) The difference engine.
(b) The computer.
(c) The difference analyzer.
(d) The calculator.

9. Shannon showed that it was theoretically possible to overcome any amount of signal noise by what action?
(a) By changing locations.
(b) By sending corrective bits of information.
(c) By creating the first anti-virus element.
(d) By limiting data.

10. Shannon proposed a solution for overcoming extra noise in his communication model that mimicked what early communicators?
(a) African drummers.
(b) Telegraph operators.
(c) The French telegraph inventors.
(d) Early telephone developers.

11. Who wrote the work known as the Principia Mathematica?
(a) Aristotle and Epecruis.
(b) Galileo and Copernicus.
(c) Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead.
(d) Edwin Hubble and Isaac Newton.

12. Who first defined the concept of "bandwith"?
(a) Albert Einstein.
(b) Harry Nyquist.
(c) Alexander Graham Bell.
(d) Samuel Morse.

13. How did Bertrand Russell address conflicting results produced by the Principia Mathematica? the problem of these recursive paradoxes by simply making them against the rules of his formal system.
(a) He ignored them since they were infrequent.
(b) Russell altered the Principia Mathematica to adjust for conflicting results.
(c) He made them against the rules.
(d) He implemented exceptions into the system.

14. The telegraph invented by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail was based on what function?
(a) The Morse Code.
(b) Capturing electrical impulses.
(c) Logarithms.
(d) Opening and closing the electric circuit.

15. What society created the first numeric tables?
(a) Chinese.
(b) Roman.
(c) Babylonian.
(d) Egyptian.

Short Answer Questions

1. How was the telephone superior to the telegraph?

2. Before "A Table Alphabeticall", how were most catalogs and word lists arranged?

3. What jobs were created to handle the increasing number of telephone calls?

4. How did the drummers of Africa differentiate between similar words?

5. Who devised a way to multiply and divide numbers by adding or subtracting their logarithms?

(see the answer keys)

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