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 can name more than 5 Scheme implementations. (Languages) | PL, culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You applauded during "Jurasic Park" when the line "Hey, I know this... It's UNIX" was uttered. (Pop Culture, UNIX) | Pop culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You groaned during "Jurasic Park" when the line "Hey, I know this... It's UNIX" was uttered, because you realized it was actually IRIX. (Pop Culture, UNIX) | Pop culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You thought the Bit from Tron was awesome. (pop culture, bitwise ops) | Pop culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You think "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton is a rock anthem of our generation. (Pop Culture, Industry) | Pop culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You rooted for the computer in "War Games". (Pop Culture, AI) | Pop culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| You rent "Nim's Island" and are disappointed that the characters never played the game. | Pop culture | Dan Garcia |
| You're at the Olympics waiting for the Marathon runners to run in the stadium, and you've been waiting for 2, 3, 4, 5 hours and nobody has returned, and you know that writing a program to automatically figure out whether they are JUST ABOUT to return or whether they're NEVER going to return is impossible... (halting problem) | theory | Dan Garcia |
| You're at the Olympics and are impressed with how the 100 m sprinters finish their race faster and faster each year, and wonder out loud whether there is some minimum time that any human could ever run 100 m. (Theory, Lower Bounds) | theory | Dan Garcia |
| You discover an old unlabeled mix tape with songs from 1970, 1980 and 1990 and want to know when the tape was made. You know that the EARLIEST it could be is right AFTER the OLDEST song on the tape (Theory, Lower Bounds) | theory | Dan Garcia |
| You find it fun to try to calculate the minimum number of breaks of a chocolate bar in order to separete its R rows and C columns into RC 1x1 squares! | theory | Dan Garcia |
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