18 of the Computer Science glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
A horizontal timeline divided into labelled blocks that shows which task runs during each interval of time; in CPU scheduling, each block is a period in which one process uses the CPU.
The principle that the output of a computer system can be no better than its input, so a model trained on poor-quality data produces poor-quality predictions.
A network node that connects two networks and passes traffic between them, translating between different protocols or formats where the networks use different ones.
The European Union law, applied since 25 May 2018, that sets rules for processing personal data, gives individuals rights over their data, and allows fines of up to €20 million or 4% of a company's worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.
The ability of a trained model to make accurate predictions on new data that it did not see during training.
One complete cycle of a genetic algorithm (evaluation, selection, crossover and mutation), or the population that results from it.
Machine learning models that produce new content, such as text, images, audio or code, resembling the data they were trained on.
A search and optimisation method, inspired by natural selection, that improves a population of candidate solutions over many generations through selection of the fittest, crossover and mutation.
A system that captures, stores, analyses and displays data linked to locations on the Earth's surface, usually as layers on a map.
A measure of how mixed the classes in a node are, equal to the probability that two examples drawn at random from the node (with replacement) belong to different classes; 0 for a pure node.
The process by which a distributed database splits a query into sub-queries for the sites that hold the relevant data, runs them, and combines the partial results into one answer, choosing a plan that keeps network transfer low.
A variable declared outside all subprograms, which can be used anywhere in the program and exists for as long as the program runs.
An optimisation method that repeatedly changes a model's parameters by a small step in the direction that reduces the loss most steeply.
A NoSQL database that stores data as nodes (entities) connected by edges (relationships), both of which can have properties, and answers queries by following the edges.
A user interface in which the user interacts with the computer through visual elements such as windows, icons, menus and a pointer, or by touch.
A processor with a very large number of simple cores designed to carry out the same operation on many data items in parallel, originally for rendering graphics and now also for other highly parallel computations.
An ordering of binary values in which each value differs from the next in exactly one bit.
The clause that collects the rows of a result with equal values in the named columns into groups, so that the query returns one row for each group.