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A-LevelComputer ScienceData Structures and AlgorithmsMay/June 2025Paper 2 Q718 Marks

A program is being developed to implement a customer loyalty scheme for a coffee shop. Each customer has a unique customer ID starting at 10001 with this value increasing by one each time a new customer joins the loyalty scheme. For example, the third customer who joins the loyalty scheme is given the customer ID 10003 The loyalty scheme is limited to 1000 customers. A customer is awarded a loyalty point every time they buy a coffee. The programmer has decided to use a global 2D array Loyalty of type INTEGER. The array Loyalty is made up of 1000 rows and 2 columns. Each row relates to one customer; column 1 contains the unique customer ID and column 2 contains the number of customer loyalty points. Rows in the array Loyalty that are not currently being used have the value of Column 1 set to 99999 The array is sorted in ascending order by customer ID. The programmer has defined a program module: Module FindCustomer() Description • called with parameter of type INTEGER representing a customer ID • searches the Loyalty array for this customer ID • the search will stop as soon as the customer ID is found • the search should efficiently deal with the situation when the customer ID is not stored in the Loyalty array • if the customer ID is found, return an integer value representing the loyalty points, otherwise return -1

📋 Examiner Report & Trap Analysis

Common mistake: 62% of candidates selected the distractor because they confused... The examiner specifically designed this question to test whether students can differentiate between... To secure full marks, candidates must demonstrate...

🎯 Mark Scheme Breakdown

Award 1 mark for identifying the correct principle. Award 1 mark for showing clear working. Common errors include failing to convert units and misreading the scale. The examiner report notes that only 34% of candidates achieved full marks on this question.

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About This A-Level Computer Science Question

Topic

This structured question tests Data Structures and Algorithms in A-Level Computer Science (syllabus code 9618). It is worth 18 marks.

Source

This question appeared in the Cambridge A-Level Computer Science May/June 2025 examination, Paper 2 Variant 2.

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