Report of a Workshop on the Scope and Nature of Computational Thinking (2010) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 1-6
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Questions posed to workshop participants included the following: What are the scope and the nature of computational thinking? How does it differ from other ways of thinking, such as mathematical thinking, quantitative reasoning, scientific thinking, and fluency with information technology?
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In addition, the reader is cautioned that the workshop was not structured to result in a consensus regarding the scope and nature of computational thinking, and the workshop was deliberately organized to include individuals with a broad range of perspectives. For this reason and because some of the discussion amounted to brainstorming, this summary may contain internal inconsistencies that reflect the wide range of views offered by workshop participants.
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The elements of computational thinking are reasonably well known, given that they include the computational concepts, principles, methods, languages, models, and tools that are often found in the study of computer science. Thus, computational thinking might include reformulation of difficult problems by reduction and transformation; approximate solutions; parallel processing; type checking and model checking as gen eralizations of dimensional analysis; problem abstraction and decompo sition; problem representation; modularization; error prevention, testing, debugging, recovery, and correction; damage containment; simulation; heuristic reasoning; planning, learning, and scheduling in the presence of uncertainty; search strategies; analysis of the computational complexity of algorithms and processes; and balancing computational costs against other design criteria.
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jobs and the U.S. ability to remain economically competitive in a global environment.3 In this view, a better educated workforce is an essential element of an internationally competitive workforce, and a number of workshop participants expressed the view that computational thinking is an essential component of such an education.
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INTRODUCTION BOX 1.1 Computation and Computational Thinking for Creating Knowledge 1. The 1976 proof of the Four-Color Conjecture was based on an exhaustive search to evaluate an enormous number of possible cases.
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. Connecting computational thinking in a personally meaningful way is at the heart of tackling the problem of how everyone can be brought into a pathway for developing and using computational thinking in their everyday lives."
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