NEW

NOTES

TO DO

Abstraction

Algorithms

Pattern Recognition

Decomposition

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Foreword

Basic Course Concepts

The goal of this course is to equip the student with certain styles and habits of thought as a set of skills AND to provide a sense of how much one knows and how much one would need to know of what in order to proceed further in various areas related to computational work.

1. Reprise abstraction | decomposition | pattern recognition | algorithm multiple times throughout the course at different scales (sometimes concentrating an entire class on one of these, sometimes all four illustrated or practiced in a single example or activity). Perhaps only formally present them at the end of the course.
2. I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.
3. Ever class session follows same ritual of review, motivate, introduce, practice, project
4. There will be an explicit inventory of skills and concepts
5. At every stage examples and applications from many fields
6. Course BEGINS with FINAL EXAM and BACKGROUND INVENTORY

Relation to programming. Relation to computer science. Relation to computer literacy.

Course begins with final exam and intake questionnaire.

And a poster of diagrams.

Finish with exam and one page posters.

NOT computer literacy and not computer science.

Denning’s Great Principles of Computing break down into seven categories: computation, communication, coordination, recollection, automation, evaluation, and design. (Report of a Workshop on The Scope and Nature of Computational Thinking
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12840.html pg. 29)