ICAR AIEEA-PG — Agricultural Engineering & Technology (Major Subject Group 10) · India · National Testing Agency for ICAR
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersProgramming, data and the basics of AI as used in agricultural engineering, from spreadsheets to decision support systems.
In the exams: Core in the ICAR 6th Deans' Committee B.Tech; ICAR AIEEA-PG Unit II (fundamentals of computers)
ICAR AIEEA-PG — Agricultural Engineering & Technology (Unit II)
Unit II names computers alongside electric motors, instruments and power distribution. Papers are not published, so emphasis cannot be counted; the syllabus supports short single-answer MCQs on computer organisation and memory, number systems and two's complement, flowchart symbols and algorithm properties, the output of a short code fragment, operators and integer division, data structures (stack, queue, tree traversal), database keys, normal forms and SQL clauses, and basic AI and ML vocabulary. With +4/−1 marking, exact definitions and careful tracing are worth more than broad reading.
How our questions for ICAR AIEEA-PG spread across the units of Computer Programming, Data Structures & Agricultural Informatics. Difficulty: 37 easy, 52 medium, 19 hard.
| Programming in C or Python | 24 | |
| Introduction to artificial intelligence and machine learning | 22 | |
| Data structures | 14 | |
| Algorithms and flowcharts | 13 | |
| Databases | 12 | |
| Spreadsheets for engineering calculations | 8 | |
| Decision support systems | 8 | |
| Agricultural apps and IoT data | 7 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
A program keeps halving an interval to locate a root but contains no test to end the loop. Which of Knuth's algorithm properties is missing?
D. Finiteness
Without a stopping condition the procedure never terminates, so finiteness fails. Each halving step is still precisely defined (definiteness) and basic enough to perform (effectiveness).
Further reading: Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 1; ISO 5807
The binary number 1101 0110 (unsigned) is written in hexadecimal and in decimal as:
C. D6 and 214
Group into four-bit nibbles: 1101 = D, 0110 = 6, so D6. Decimal = 13 × 16 + 6 = 214. Reading the nibbles in reverse gives 6D (109); 196 is C4; B6 mistakes 1101 for 1011.
Further reading: Standard computer-fundamentals texts
What does print(0.1 + 0.2 == 0.3) display in Python, and why?
D. False, because 0.1 and 0.2 have no exact binary floating-point form
IEEE 754 doubles store 0.1 and 0.2 approximately; their sum is 0.30000000000000004, which differs from the stored 0.3. Python does not round sums, and == works on floats; compare with a tolerance such as abs(a − b) < 1e-9 instead.
Further reading: IEEE 754; Python Language Reference (docs.python.org)
A program integrates a runoff hydrograph by the trapezoidal rule. Discharges at hourly intervals are 0, 4, 10, 6, 2 and 0 m³/s. What runoff volume does it compute?
A. 79,200 m³
h = 3600 s. V = h[Q0/2 + Q1 + Q2 + Q3 + Q4 + Q5/2] = 3600 × 22 = 79,200 m³. Halving every ordinate gives 39,600; using h = 60 (minutes as seconds) gives 1,320; 158,400 forgets the ½ in the h/2 factor.
Further reading: Chapra and Canale, Numerical Methods for Engineers
Keys 50, 30, 70, 20, 40, 60, 80 are inserted in that order into an empty binary search tree. What is the preorder traversal?
C. 50 30 20 40 70 60 80
The tree has 50 at the root, 30 (children 20, 40) on the left and 70 (children 60, 80) on the right. Preorder visits node, left, right: 50 30 20 40 70 60 80. 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 is the inorder (sorted) traversal, 20 40 30 60 80 70 50 the postorder, and the insertion order is the level-order traversal.
Further reading: Cormen et al., Introduction to Algorithms
Why is reaching the k-th element of a singly linked list slower than reaching the k-th element of an array?
C. The list must be walked node by node from the head, which takes time proportional to k
Array elements are contiguous, so element i sits at base + i × size and is reached in constant time. Linked-list nodes are scattered and joined by pointers, so reaching node k takes k steps. Linked lists are not contiguous, not hashed, and are walked from the head.
Further reading: Cormen et al., Introduction to Algorithms
A spreadsheet reports a circular reference in cell F9. What does this mean?
A. A formula in F9 depends, directly or through other cells, on its own value
A circular reference is a dependency loop; it is usually an error unless iterative calculation was enabled on purpose for an implicit equation. A deleted reference gives a reference error, and text-formatted numbers or merged cells are different problems.
Further reading: Spreadsheet program documentation; standard engineering spreadsheet practice
A model is trained on past records of rainfall, fertiliser and sowing date, each labelled with the yield obtained (t/ha), to predict yield for new fields. What kind of learning task is this?
B. Supervised regression
The examples carry known answers (supervised) and the answer is a number (regression). Classification predicts categories; clustering has no labels; reinforcement learning learns from rewards through interaction.
Further reading: Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman, The Elements of Statistical Learning
A 12-bit analogue-to-digital converter measures 0 to 3.3 V. Taking resolution as range/2^n, what voltage does one count represent?
D. 0.806 mV
2^12 = 4096 levels, so 3.3 V/4096 = 0.806 mV per count. 3.223 mV is a 10-bit converter; 275 mV divides by the number of bits instead of the number of levels. 0.403 mV divides by 2^13.
Further reading: FAO and ITU, E-agriculture Strategy Guide; standard data-acquisition texts
A vibration signal on a pump contains frequencies up to 50 Hz. According to the sampling theorem, what sampling rate is needed to avoid aliasing?
D. More than 100 samples per second
The sampling rate must exceed twice the highest frequency present (the Nyquist criterion): more than 2 × 50 = 100 Hz. Sampling at 50 Hz or below makes the 50 Hz component appear as a false lower frequency.
Further reading: FAO and ITU, E-agriculture Strategy Guide; standard data-acquisition texts
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