Quiz: Text Compression (You Can Say That Again!)

Multiple-Choice Questions

1. What is it called when computers represent information as efficiently as possible?
A) Downloading
B) Compression
C) Coding language
D) Formatting

2. Why do computers need to compress data?
A) To make text look nicer
B) Because they only have a limited amount of space to store information
C) To make files harder to open
D) To slow down the Internet

3. In the poem "The Rain," what kind of things were replaced with boxes and arrows?
A) Punctuation marks
B) Repeated letters, groups of letters, or whole words/phrases
C) Random letters
D) Only the title

4. When designing your own puzzle poem, which direction should the arrows always point?
A) To a later part of the text
B) To an earlier part of the text
C) Straight up
D) Off the page

5. In the "Banana" example, what does the code Ban(2,3) tell the computer to do?
A) Count forward 2 letters and copy 3 letters
B) Count back 2 characters, then copy 3 consecutive characters
C) Delete 2 letters and add 3 new ones
D) Repeat the whole word 3 times

6. According to the resource, why is it usually only worth compressing groups of two or more letters (rather than single letters)?
A) Single letters are too hard to find
B) Computers cannot copy single letters
C) Using two numbers to code just one letter could make the file bigger, not smaller
D) Single letters are not allowed in text

7. What is another name for the "pointing to earlier occurrences of text" compression method described in this activity?
A) Morse code
B) GIF format
C) Ziv-Lempel (or LZ) coding
D) Binary code

8. Who invented the compression method described in "What's it all about?"
A) Two American teachers
B) Two Israeli professors in the 1970s
C) A computer company in 2002
D) Students learning English

Short-Answer Questions

9. In the "Short and Sweet" activity, what were you asked to do to the poem about the old lady who swallowed a bird, and why?

10. Explain in your own words why compressing data can help a modem send information faster over the Internet.

11. Name one other method of compression mentioned in the resource that is based on giving shorter codes to letters used more often.

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Answer Key

1. B) Compression
2. B) Because they only have a limited amount of space to store information
3. B) Repeated letters, groups of letters, or whole words/phrases
4. B) To an earlier part of the text
5. B) Count back 2 characters, then copy 3 consecutive characters
6. C) Using two numbers to code just one letter could make the file bigger, not smaller
7. C) Ziv-Lempel (or LZ) coding
8. B) Two Israeli professors in the 1970s
9. You were asked to cross out all groups of two or more letters that had already occurred earlier in the poem, because these repeated groups are no longer needed—they could be replaced by a pointer, saving space (like a computer would do).
10. Compression reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted over the phone line, so less data has to travel through the modem connection, making it go much faster.
11. Morse code (it gives shorter codes to letters that are used more often).