Computational Thinking is the title of a talk given by Dr Jeannette Wing this Wednesday, April 2, 3pm, Ballroom B Student Center.
Abstract:
Computational thinking is a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world. The two A’s of computational thinking, abstraction and automation, help us to solve problems, create designs, and understand human behavior. Based on the ability to think at multiple levels of abstraction at once, computational thinking has influenced many disciplines and should play a key role in education that will inspire future generations.
Speaker:
Dr Jeannette Wing is Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation’s Computer Information Science and Engineering Directorate and President’s Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon.
Food:
Reception immediately following the lecture.
LBC:
Lecture qualifies for Gen Ed Learning Beyond the Classroom credit.
A timely and apropos lecture for emutalk participants in the recent discussion on curriculum. I will be very interested to hear what people in other disciplines think about “think[ing] at multiple levels of abstraction at once”. This style of thinking is something that computer scientists have long felt is special to their discipline — Dr Wing’s thesis, that it is a powerful paradigm for other disciplines, is enticing. If you are interested in how people think or in cross-discipline themes, then this talk is for you.
I hope you all come to the talk and reception. Jeannette Wing is a rock star of computer science; she is well known and respected in the computer science community; CMU, the university where she is professor is, IMO, in the top two US universities for computer science/engineering. EMU’s Computer Science department is hosting this talk, under the direction of its head, Dr Bill McMillan.
The base and self-serving purpose of this comment is to move this topic to the top of the new comment list.
Do come to Dr Wing’s talk. I was just in a meeting with her and she is very articulate and interesting.
Okay, I’ll bite: how was the talk?
Maybe 150 people, approximately 2/3 were students, a handful of academic administrators, quite a few faculty and staff, a few computer science alumni. Food was good. Nice, (demographically) diverse audience; several questions at the end; she connected very well with students: “you’re the ones who will have the fun of figuring it out.”
Her examples of computational thinking went by too fast for me to write down; I’ll try to get the original reference eventually . Here are a few I remember. Computational thinking includes:
- Determining, ahead of time, if a problem is solvable and how much work it will take to solve it.
- Judging a solution from its elegance and simplicity (as well as correctness).
- Thinking recursively.
- Thinking at multiple levels of abstraction at once: e.g., (1) think about how the user of a piece of software will interact with the product, at the same time (2) as the solution is being implemented in a particular language and (3) on a particular platform, at the same time (4) as you decide best implementation strategies based on machine operating characteristics.
- Separating problem solving from specific language/tool of solution.
- Taking advantage of automating steps.
She spent a fair amount of time giving examples of how computational solutions and perspectives have influenced (and vice versa) science, engineering, social sciences. She mentioned the humanities, but her examples there were not convincing to me, so I’ve forgotten them already.
More than one student have thanked me for “forcing” them to attend the talk. They really enjoyed it and it was at a good level for mind-expanding. The faculty in the computer science department (I have spoken) with liked different parts of the talk. For example, I really enjoyed the computational science examples, while Mike Zeiger really like the “what are the deep questions in computer science” part (e.g., what is computable?).