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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did cosmologist George Gamow immediately recognize about DNA as a code and proposed that it could be deciphered mathematically?
(a) It was a code and it could be cloned.
(b) It was dynamic and ever-changing.
(c) It was a code and it could be deciphered mathematically.
(d) It was a code and it could be developed to duplicate.

2. What comment did IBM researcher Charles Bennet make about the amount of information in a message?
(a) Is not a good measurement of its capacity.
(b) Is not a good measurement of its meaningfulness.
(c) Is not a good measure of its ability for computation.
(d) Is not a good measurement of its importance.

3. What did Chaitin determine about most numbers?
(a) That they can be compressed to manageable entities.
(b) That they have complex alogarithms.
(c) That they are computable.
(d) That they are not computable.

4. Schrodinger and others theorized that genes had what role in life?
(a) They are a kind of code for constructing an human cells.
(b) They are a kind of marker for cell multification.
(c) They are a kind of code for identifying an organism.
(d) They are a kind of code for constructing an organism.

5. The existence of what entity as a basic element of genetics had been theorized before the mechanics of genetic reproduction was fully understood?
(a) DNA.
(b) RNA.
(c) The Genome.
(d) A gene.

6. Recognizing a famous painting like the Mona Lisa is attributed to what factor?
(a) Education.
(b) Memory.
(c) The meme.
(d) Bits.

7. How does Wikipedia differ from the Encyclopedia Britannica?
(a) It is not reliable.
(b) It contains questionable material.
(c) It is collaborative and descriptive but not authoritative.
(d) It is collaborative and descriptive but not up to date.

8. Why is the randomness of numbers difficult to define?
(a) Numbers are infinite.
(b) A number may be random to some but not to others.
(c) Numbers have an unpredictability.
(d) Numbers send different messages.

9. What did Seth Lloyd, a quantum engineer at MIT, base his estimates on the universe on?
(a) The speed of light and the age of the universe.
(b) The speed of light.
(c) The volume and capacity of the universe.
(d) The age of the universe.

10. How much information does the universe hold?
(a) Around 10 to the 90th power bits.
(b) Approximately 15 trillion bits.
(c) Around 20 to the 100th power bits.
(d) An infinite amount of information.

11. What are genes?
(a) Part of DNA.
(b) Bits of information.
(c) RNA.
(d) Memory cells.

12. What did the study of thermodynamics not state about the movement of energy?
(a) That it traveled in random directions with no pattern.
(b) That it was dynamic.
(c) That it traveled in one direction.
(d) That it traveled in many directions.

13. Memes are messages that are independent of what other element?
(a) Of outside influence.
(b) Of contradicting information.
(c) Of the people who propagate them.
(d) Of new messages.

14. Shannon used the term entropy to have what meaning in reference to a message?
(a) Relevance.
(b) Uncertainty.
(c) Importance.
(d) Certainty.

15. Erwin Schrodinger used the concept of entropy to describe what group?
(a) Microbes.
(b) Plant life.
(c) Allergins.
(d) Living organisms.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did mathematician Gregory Chaitin propose about Shannon's concept of entropy as uncertainty?

2. How are memes replicated?

3. What results when a closed system's temperature evens out?

4. Why is the belief in God an enduring one?

5. What happened to the library that once held all known information?

(see the answer keys)

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