What Is Computational Thinking?
Overview
Computational Thinking (CT) has been articulated as a “fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists.” Almost all agree with the lofty goals of the initiative, to teach humanity the ability to see the world through the sharpened eyes of a computer scientist. However, what does it really mean to be a computational thinker? While it is helpful to see examples that show we’re already engaged in CT (e.g., using a backpack is pre-fetching and caching), it is perhaps more valuable to see everyday situations that are transformed when viewed through a computational thinker’s trained eyes (e.g., writing dates as YYYY-MM-DD so they’ll sort correctly). We hope to present enough examples to satisfy a growing chorus of those who need more grounding, using a unique delivery format.
SIGCSE '10
Abstract  |
Daniel D. Garcia  |
Colleen M. Lewis  |
John P. Dougherty  |
Matthew C. Jadud  |
| Jokes | Category | Author |
|---|---|---|
| You've sung the song "This is the song that never ends," and realized it must implement tail calls correctly, or it would overflow. (Recursion, Compilation) | algorithms/recursion | Matthew C. Judd |
| If you've ever used radix sort to sort a pile of exams. | algorithms/recursion | Colleen Lewis |
| If you've analyzed the run time of sorting algorithms executed by an array, a linked list, and a person. | algorithms/recursion | Colleen Lewis |
| In response to being upset when your cat Flo keeps bringing dead animals into your house, you build a vision system to take a snapshot of her and unlock the door when her mouth is empty. http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm (Applications) | applications | Dan Garcia |
| If you're trying to put together iTunes "smart" playlists and really enjoy the features that allow you to have "all" or "any" of a filter criteria set up, as well as membership (or not) in other playlists which allows you to easily create a very complicated filter "expression", similar for apple's address book groups & mail smart folders. (Boolean, Set Theory) | boolean set theory | Dan Garcia |
| In response to a gleeful "Trick or Treat!" from 8-year old ghouls and goblins, you hand out some candy then hope that they meant exclusive__ or and not inclusive__ or!! (Boolean Logic) | boolean set theory | Dan Garcia |
| You only attend conferences whose names are acronyms. (Culture) | Culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You're still wondering who these "user" people are. (Usability, Culture) | Culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You've made a purchase because you knew the software/hardware behind it was open source. (Open Source) | Culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You think a paper titled "Computing Humor Considered Harmful: No Silver Bullet" is funny. (Titles, History) | Culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| If someone tells you that they're chopping up a log and you don't assume that wood or an axe is involved. | Culture | Colleen Lewis |
| When measuring your child's height, you realize that just marking their height on the edge of a door loses one degree of data -- namely time. Instead, you mark the 2d point time, height ala. http://z.about.com/d/pediatrics/1/0/J/1/boystwoyears.gif (visualization) | data representation | Dan Garcia |
| You're bothered that "GHOTI" can be pronounced "FISH." Gh from "tough", o from "women", ti from "motion." (Good Naming, Consistency) | data representation | Dan Garcia |
| Your 10-month-old daughter's top and bottom four front teeth are coming in out-of-order, (top=1011, bottom=0111) and you remember which ones are in with hex B7. (Binary/Hex) | data representation | Dan Garcia |
| It's ever bothered you that noon and midnight are not AM or PM. | data representation | Dan Garcia |
| You'd like to go back to ancient Rome and insert July and August at the END after December not the MIDDLE because it bothers you that Oct and Dec are not the 8th and 10th months. (Numbers) | data representation | Dan Garcia |
| You realize "parkway" and "driveway" are great object names, but have been used incorrectly for years! (OOP) | data representation | John P. Dougherty |
| You're trying to teach your child to read English and think it's crazy that the G's in "gorge" sound different and realize that sonic overloading is a bad idea. | data representation | Dan Garcia |
| You feel thirteen and fifteen are just unfair; they should be "threeteen" and "fiveteen." And what's the deal with ten, eleven and twelve? They should be "teen", "one teen" and "twoteen"! Actually, Chinese did it right. E.g., Twelve is One ten two. One hundred twenty five is "one hundred two ten five") (Consistent Naming) | data representation | John P. Dougherty |
| You appreciate that writing your dates YYYY-MM-DD is the only way (for about 8 more millennia) that all your pictures will all be sorted correctly on the computer when listed alphabetically. (Big Endian vs Little Endian) | data representation | Dan Garcia |
- Printer-friendly version
- 2977 reads
