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'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're bothered that "GHOTI" can be pronounced "FISH." Gh from "tough", o from "women", ti from "motion." (Good Naming, Consistency) | data representation | Dan Garcia |
| You're cutting the plastic 6-pack can holder thingy to remove all loops otherwise it could get caught around a seagull's neck, and you find it interesting to calculate the minimum number of cuts it might take. (Topology, Graph Theory) | Dan Garcia | |
| You're sharing a candy bar with some friends and find it fun to design a way that makes it fair for everyone, even if all are selfish and some are cheaters! (Algorithms, Game Theory) | Dan Garcia | |
| You're still wondering who these "user" people are. (Usability, Culture) | Culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| 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're working with three other outstanding educators to submit a proposal for a special session entitled "If \_\_, you might be a computational thinker" and you use a shared document like a wiki or Google Docs instead of sending copies of your Latex or Word file around. (Single Source of Truth) | datastructures | Dan Garcia |
| You've made a purchase because you knew the software/hardware behind it was open source. (Open Source) | Culture | Matthew C. Judd |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Your boss gives you a choice of paying you all at once or one penny the first day, and doubling it every day for some number of days, and you have no trouble deciding (correctly!) which one to choose... (binary fluency) | math-y-ness/binary | Dan Garcia |
- Printer-friendly version
- 2982 reads
