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 |
|---|---|---|
| When you hear that half of American students are performing below average, you're not discouraged. | math-y-ness/binary | Colleen Lewis |
| You think that the joke "There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary numbers and those who don't," is funny. | math-y-ness/binary | Robert McCartney |
| You realize that on big thruways like the Mass Pike and NJ Turnpike (where you get an "enter" pass and pay based on how far you've driven when you submit your pass) that they could automatically hand you a speeding ticket if your average velocity between the two points exceeded the limit. | math-y-ness/binary | Dan Garcia |
| You have many deadbolt locks on your apartment door, but lock /every other/ lock, that way when the robber is breaking in and toggling all the lock states, they're always locking half of them! (Binary, Toggling) | math-y-ness/binary | Dan Garcia |
| When baking, you use an oven timer which beeps and turns off the oven instead of setting the oven and having to look at the watch every so often. (Polling vs Interrupts) | optimization | Dan Garcia |
| Instead of making dinner seven times a week, you make one large meal and reheat for the week. (and making start up costs constant instead of linear) | optimization | John P. Dougherty |
| You start the second load of laundry as soon as the first load is done; in fact, you actually start drying the first load before you start washing the second since drying takes longer in the pipeline. (Pipelining) | optimization | John P. Dougherty |
| If you've ever wondered or appreciated why the load planes by sections first instead of letting everyone just pile on. Especially if you've ever thought it would be fun to run a simulation testing whether it's faster to load the plane from the back to the front, or from the outside in, or with no seating preferences. (Optimization, Simulation) | optimization | Dan Garcia |
| You appreciate the value of documentation when you find a photo from your great-grandparents generation and the photographer has written who is in it, the photo's date and location. (Documentation) | optimization | Dan Garcia |
| You use speed dial on your phone. (Caching) | optimization | Dan Garcia |
| You call someone and you get their spouse because they're not home and instead of saying "I'll call back in an hour" you ask them to call YOU back. (Polling vs Interrupts) | optimization | Dan Garcia |
| You wonder why Golf courses don't try to make more money by taking advantage of the wasted "filling" and "draining" of their course pipeline by allowing anyone to start playing as soon as dawn cracks and pro-rate based on what hole they start on (aka a "shotgun start"). Similarly for playing until dark. For example, a golfer could start playing at 4am on hole 17, play two holes, and pay 2/18th of the green fees! Or someone could start playing at 8pm on hole 1, play 1 hole and only pay 1/18th! Goodbye pipeline filling and draining! (Pipelining) | optimization | Dan Garcia |
| If you've ever been annoyed when someone changed their phone number / address / email and you (and all their other 1000 friends) had to go change the entry for them in your address book. (Indirection, Single Source of Truth, "Push" Information) | optimization | Dan Garcia |
| If you've noticed that you could have starvation in a supermarket line. | optimization | Colleen Lewis |
| If you've ever thought that taking the first car offered by the rental agency was redundant redundant. Get it? First car? waka waka waka (LISP, First/Car) | PL | Matthew C. Judd |
| You voted in a Scheme standardization process. (Languages) | PL | Matthew C. Judd |
| You'd rather debate the relative merits of prefix-vs-infix notation than talk about politics. (Languages) | PL | Matthew C. Judd |
| You know at least one "shoot yourself in the foot" joke. (Languages) | PL | Matthew C. Judd |
| You think debating prefix-vs-infix notation is politics. (Languages, Holy Wars) | PL | Matthew C. Judd |
| You have ever instinctively written a parentheses after writing the word "while". | PL | Colleen Lewis |
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