Quizzes for Primary Schoolchildren

Yesterday (the 5th of May) was the children’s day, which is an official holiday, in South Korea, (by the way, the day before yesterday was Star Wars Day Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. ) and I found that Xeraph, who is the CEO of the IT security company named Nchovy, as well as the creator & core programmer of the OSGi based opensource security platform, Kraken, posted some quiz for kids. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. His blog also has other quizzes for the primary schoolchildren.

These quizzes remind me of my childhood as these kinds of quizzes are what I used to solve when I was a primary schoolchild. It was approximately 22 years ago. That time, I learned Basic (Not Visual Basic (VB), VB didn’t exist back then), Fortran, COBOL and C. When I was learning Basic, those kinds of problems were what I solved. After I graduated from the primary school, I had not touched any computer programming languages at all for 13 years. I started it again as I came to Sydney and entered the university to study IT. Then I realised that I could remember nothing about what I learned before. Nothing at all. That’s why my ‘about me‘ page doesn’t contain any of Basic, Fortran and COBOL since I’ve completely forgot about these (it does have Visual Basic though as it’s my first programming language that I learned at the diploma school, UTS:INSEARCH). So my point is, doesn’t matter whether it’s a programming language or a human language, if you don’t practice or keep studying constantly, you will lose your skills and fluency of the language.

Anyway, I saw those quizzes and solved it for fun yet feel like I did better when I was a kid. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Back then, I didn’t even use a computer to solve it but only pen and paper. The followings are the quizzes and my answers, yet there can be much better answers of course, so why don’t you try by yourself before you check out mine.

This is the prompt utility class, used for the other programmes, to get input values. Notice that it doesn’t check whether the input value is number, integer more precisely, or not although it does check if the given integer is a positive one.

package com.lckymn.kevin.simplequiz;</p>

<p>import java.util.Scanner;</p>

<p>/**
 * @author Lee, SeongHyun (Kevin)
 * @version 0.0.1 (2010-05-05)
 */
public final class PromptUtil
{
    private PromptUtil()
    {
        throw new IllegalStateException(getClass().getName() + &quot; cannot be instantiated.&quot;);
    }</p>

<pre><code>public static int askForPositiveInt(String message)
{
    final Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
    System.out.print(message);
    int number = Integer.parseInt(scanner.nextLine());

    while (0 &amp;gt;= number)
    {
        System.out.println(&amp;quot;Please enter a position integer.&amp;quot;);
        System.out.print(message);
        number = Integer.parseInt(scanner.nextLine());
    }
    return number;
}
</code></pre>

<p>}

 

Quiz 1. (taken from http://xeraph.com/5251248)

n for diamond? 3

  *</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<p>*</p>

<p>

n for diamond? 5

    *</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<pre><code>*
</code></pre>

<p>

n for diamond? 7

      *
     ***
    *****</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<pre><code>*****
 ***
  *
</code></pre>

<p>

n for diamond? 9

        *
       ***
      *****
     *******
    *********</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<pre><code>*********
 *******
  *****
   ***
    *
</code></pre>

<p>

* Kevin’s Answer1

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• Kevin’s Answer2

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Quiz 2. (taken from http://xeraph.com/5251248)

n for outer box? 4
m for inner box? 2

</p>

<hr />

<ul>
<li>*</li>
<li>*</li>
</ul>

<hr />

<p>

n for outer box? 7
m for inner box? 3

</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<p>**   **
**   **
**   **</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<p>

n for outer box? 10
m for inner box? 4

</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<p>***    ***
***    ***
***    ***
***    ***</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<p>

n for outer box? 12
m for inner box? 6

</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<p>***      ***
***      ***
***      ***
***      ***
***      ***
***      ***</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<hr />

<p>

* Kevin’s Answer

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

 

 

Quiz 3. (taken from http://xeraph.com/5251248)

n for outer triangle? 3
m for inner triangle? 1

  *</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<p>

n for outer triangle? 5
m for inner triangle? 3

    *</p>

<hr />

<hr />

<p>**   **
**     **</p>

<p>

n for outer triangle? 8
m for inner triangle? 4

       *
      ***
     *****
    *******</p>

<hr />

<p>****   ****
 ****     ****
****       ****</p>

<p>

n for outer triangle? 10
m for inner triangle? 5

         *
        ***
       *****
      *******
     *********
    ***** *****
   *****   *****
  *****     *****
 *****       *****
*****         *****

* Kevin’s Answer

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

 

 

Quiz 4. (taken from http://xeraph.com/5261697)

matrix size n? 5
  1   2   3   4   5
 16  17  18  19   6
 15  24  25  20   7
 14  23  22  21   8
 13  12  11  10   9</p>

<p>

matrix size n? 6
  1   2   3   4   5   6
 20  21  22  23  24   7
 19  32  33  34  25   8
 18  31  36  35  26   9
 17  30  29  28  27  10
 16  15  14  13  12  11</p>

<p>

matrix size n? 7
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7
 24  25  26  27  28  29   8
 23  40  41  42  43  30   9
 22  39  48  49  44  31  10
 21  38  47  46  45  32  11
 20  37  36  35  34  33  12
 19  18  17  16  15  14  13</p>

<p>

matrix size n? 8
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8
 28  29  30  31  32  33  34   9
 27  48  49  50  51  52  35  10
 26  47  60  61  62  53  36  11
 25  46  59  64  63  54  37  12
 24  45  58  57  56  55  38  13
 23  44  43  42  41  40  39  14
 22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15

* Kevin’s Answer1

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• Kevin’s Answer2

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