* Computational Thinking * Data Representations

2. Computational Thinking
and Representations
Adapted from Clayton Lewis

3. What is “computational
thinking”?
● Way of thinking about problems
that has evolved as computational
methods have spread through
activities of all kinds
● Helpful to understand why
computation has become so useful!

4. A Slogan:
“Computational systems are
representational systems”
● People use computers to represent
all kinds of important stuff…
● … because computational
representations have extremely
valuable characteristics.
● But, what is a representation?

5. A Representational
System
● Relates a target domain of interest
to a representation domain, in
which work is easier to do in some
way.
!
● Let’s look at a couple of examples

9. Advantages of Computational
Representations
● automation replaces costly manual or
mental operations with electronic
operations
● computational representations can be
stored and transmitted easily and cheaply
● computational representations of behavior
have flexibility advantages…
o many kinds of behavior can be captured

10. Computational
Thinking…
● …is seeing how to create a
computational representation of
something you are interested in
● key aspects are
o identifying the important things in the
situation
o identifying their behaviors

11. Computational
Thinking Patterns…
● …are common kinds of behavior that
are useful in many different situations
● you’ll learn some of these patterns,
how to recognize when they are useful,
and how to make them work in the
AgentSheets visual programming
system.

12. They are part of a
bigger picture:
● features of a situation you are
interested in
!
connect to
!
● computational things
o data, programs

13. Some more examples
● social networking
!
● tracking 16th C European diplomats
(Thea Lindquist)
!
● ant foraging
!
● ….

14. Thank you!
Questions? :D