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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 10.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the goal of James Murray when he wrote the first Oxford English Dictionary in 1879?
(a) To alphabetize all words.
(b) To provide the pronunciation of all words.
(c) To limit the work to only proper English.
(d) To catalog the entire English language.

2. Who was the sixth editor of the Oxford English Dictionary?
(a) Thomas Edison.
(b) Mark Twain.
(c) Lord Byron.
(d) John Simpson.

3. A new interest in what pursuit arose following the rise of the telegraph?
(a) The telephone.
(b) Cryptography.
(c) Writing.
(d) Computer Science.

4. Seventeenth numerical tables were set up so that what factor could be learned about each number?
(a) The base number.
(b) Pi.
(c) The logarithm.
(d) The square root.

5. What did a young mathematician named Kurt Gödel conclude about conflicting statements?
(a) There frequency represented only a .001 percent possibility of occurring.
(b) There were some statements that could neither be proved or disproved.
(c) That Russell had made an error in basic structure of the Principia Mathematica.
(d) That the Principia Mathematica was flawed and began his own work.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was used in the earliest known method of writing language?

2. What did MIT scholar Vannevar Bush create?

3. In the prologue to "The Information", what year does Gleick identify as a crucial year in the history of information and computing?

4. How many years ago was the first language established?

5. How were telegraph messages priced?

(see the answer key)

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