Computational Thinking Lecture Notes PDF

Week 2 – Lecture 1 Problem Solving in Computing Abstraction and decomposition Objectives Introduce the concept of computational thinking and its importance.  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Computers are everywhere in the modern world. They help run almost every aspect of our lives and our soc...

Week 2 – Lecture 1 Problem Solving in Computing Abstraction and decomposition Objectives Introduce the concept of computational thinking and its importance.  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Computers are everywhere in the modern world. They help run almost every aspect of our lives and our society. Modern society depends on computation in ways you might never have considered. (Provide some examples)  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING The questions now:  How to pick out the essential details of a problem?  How to formulate a problem in ways a computer can understand?  How to follow a problem-solving process in ways that the process can be automated?  You may not become a professional COMPUTATIONAL THINKING programmer, but you will likely encounter programming in some capacity computational thinking in many diverse careers: - Natural sciences: (computational biology, genomics, applied physics, climate change, astronomy) - Social sciences: (social studies, population analysis) - Medicine:(disease analysis, medical imaging,  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING What is Computational Thinking (CT)? Computational thinking allows us to take a complex problem, understand what the problem is and develop possible solutions. We can then present these solutions in a way that a computer, a human, or both, can understand.  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING What is computational thinking? “Computational Thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution(s) in such a way that a computer—human or machine—can effectively carry out” CT can be applied by anyone who is attempting to solve a problem and have a computer play a role in the solution.  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Examples: Computing any equation, e.g., computing radius area, computing your GPA Predicting climate change Sorting data Assisting police, lawyers and judges Other examples?  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Difference between Computational Thinking and Programming: Computational Thinking teaches an approach to problem-solving where the ultimate aim is to provide a solution whose form means it is ready to be programmed into a computer. Programming (a subfield of Computer Science) is mainly done to educate students in how best to write programs, and it focuses on the production of high-quality software OUR COMPLEX PROBLEM STARTER Starter Activity: How many single square faces in diagrams a and b  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING There are four key techniques (cornerstones) to computational thinking: breaking down a complex focusing on the problem or system into important information smaller, more manageable only, ignoring irrelevant parts detail developing looking for a step-by- similarities step among and solution to within the problems problem, or the rules to  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Each cornerstone is as important as the others. They are like legs on a table - if one leg is missing, the table will probably collapse.  DECOMPOSITION Breaking the problem down into smaller parts means that each smaller problem can be examined in more detail. Task: Solve the Crime with Decomposition: Look at the picture carefully. The A crime has been committed, Crime a diamond has been stolen. How could this complex problem of the committed crime be solved by breaking down into simpler problems that can be examined individually, in detail. DECOMPOSITION  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Decomposition defines the solution to a large, complex problem in terms of smaller, simpler problems of the same form as the original problem. By applying decomposition, you aim to end up with a number of sub-problems that can be understood and solved individually.  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Visually this means you may need to define the problem in a tree structure. Take a science project problem as example: Figure 1: Science Project problem  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Now go to lower levels in the tree: Figure 2: Lower levels of Science Project problem  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Levels of 3.1 in Lower levels of Science Project problem The front matter (3.1) of a dissertation is made up (decomposed) of several parts, such as: write title page write copyright section write abstract write contents section write list of figures section  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Example: starting from your house on Main Street, arrive at the Town Hall by 3.00 p.m. What is the departure time? * 3.00 p.m. Arrive at Town Hall * 2.55–3.00 p.m. Walk from Town Hall underground station to Town Hall * 2.45–2.55 p.m. Take underground from City bus station to Town Hall underground station * 2.30–2.45 p.m. Take bus from Main Street bus station to City bus station * 2.25–2.30 p.m. Walk from house on Main Street to bus station * 2.25 p.m. Departure time  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Think about your GPA in each semester….!! How we can decompose it?  COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Example for some Effective Strategies:  Think critically: question ideas and ask yourself: What if it goes wrong?  Solve a concrete instance  Find a related problem  References Maureen Sprankle and Jim Hubbard, Problem Solving and Programming Concepts, Pearson, 2011 - 9th Edition, ISBN- 10 : 0273752219, ISBN-13 : 978-0273752219 Karl Beecher, Computational Thinking - A beginner's guide to problem-solving and programming, BCS Learning & Development Limited, 2017 – 1st Edition, ISBN-13 : 9781780173641 Walter Savitch, Java An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, Pearson, 2017 - 8th Edition, ISBN-10 : 0134462033, ISBN-13 : 978-0134462035 Walter Savitch & Kenrick Mock, Problem Solving with C++, Pearson, 2017 - 10th Edition, ISBN-10 : 0134448286, ISBN-13 : 978- 0134448282 22 Unit 3 Selby High School  References Jeannette M. Wing, Carnegie Mellon University, Computational Thinking and Thinking About Computing. 2008 [Online]. Available: http://cs104.cs.ua.edu/Lectures/ComputationalThinking.pdf [Last Accessed April 2022]. Janet Peterson, Florida State University, Introduction to Computational Thinking. 2017 [Online]. Available: https://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jpeterson/intro.pdf [Last Accessed April 2022]. Juni Learning, how to introduce Computational Thinking. 2020 [Online]. Available: https://junilearning.com/blog/guide/how-to-introduce-computational-thinking-to-kids/ [Last Accessed March 2022]. The Tech, Computational Thinking. 2020 [Online]. Available: https://www.thetech.org/sites/default/files/techtip_computationalthinking_v3.pdf [Last Accessed March 2022]. Anip Sharma, Computational Thinking. 2020 [Online]. Available: https://edunetfoundation.org/gurushala-pdf/3.%20Computational%20Thinking.pdf [Last Accessed April 2022]. Unplugged, Computational Thinking. 2022 [Online]. Available: https://code.org/curriculum/course3/1/Teacher [Last Accessed April 2022]. Franc Lucas, The Basic of Computational Thinking. 2022 [Online]. Available: https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/the-basics-of-computational-thinking--cms-30172 [Last Accessed April 2022]. Sridhar Lyer, Computational Thinking in Education. 2022 [Online]. Available: https://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~sri/talks/CT- keynote-t4e2019.pptx [Last Accessed April 2022]. Thoseby, Computing Problem Solving. 2022 [Online]. Available: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1c8JLciAzUk7pCNjM5z2i3hdAiUP2s9yFSkAwuePdnf0/htmlpresent [Last Accessed April 2022]. Wendy Voor, Royal Dutch, Visio Digital, Computational Thinking. 2022 [Online]. Available: https://slidetodoc.com/computational-thinking-wendy-voor-royal-dutch-visio-digital/ [Last Accessed April 2022]. Instilling the 21th Century Skills, 2019 Train-The-Trainer Sessions, Computational Thinking. 2019 [Online]. Available: https://africacodeweek.org/images/uploads/assets/EN-ACW2019-New-Curriculum-and-Teaching-Materials.pptx [Last Accessed April 2022]. 23 Unit 3 Selby High School