Introduction to computational thinking

M269_1

Introduction to computational
thinking

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About this free course

This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University

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978-1-4730-1811-2 (.kdl)
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Contents
 Introduction

 Learning outcomes

 1 Computational thinking and automation

 1.1 Automation

 2 Computational thinking and abstraction

 2.1 Models

 2.2 Encapsulation

 2.3 Encapsulation in computing

 2.4 Why modelling and encapsulation matter

 2.5 Computational thinking: the overview diagram

 2.6 Varieties of abstraction

 2.7 Virtual worlds

 3 Computational thinking everywhere

 3.1 Machine learning

 Conclusion

 Glossary

 References

 Acknowledgements

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Introduction
One can major [i.e. graduate] in computer science and do
anything. One can major in English or mathematics and go on to a
multitude of different careers. Ditto computer science. One can
major in computer science and go on to a career in medicine, law,
business, politics, any type of science or engineering, and even
the arts.

Jeannette M. Wing, Professor of Computer Science at

Carnegie Mellon University (United States) and Head of
Microsoft Research International

Sounds great that ‘One can major [i.e. graduate] in computer

science and do anything’, doesn’t it? Then again, isn’t this miles
away from the view of computing as a training ground for
programmers and system builders? The good news is that one
doesn’t necessarily need to exclude the other! The grand vision
behind this quote is that learning to program, build large systems,
and so on, allows you to develop something which is much more
valuable than any of these on their own, namely the ability to think
like a computer scientist. Over the past decade or so, Jeannette
Wing has been popularising this view under the banner of
computational thinking.

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Figure 1 Abstraction, a recurring theme in this course, illustrated by four

representations of a cow by Theo van Doesburg, 1917, 1918

View description - Figure 1 Abstraction, a recurring theme in this course,

illustrated by four representations ...

Much of the material in this course is organised around video clips

from a presentation that Wing gave in 2009 entitled ‘Computational
Thinking and Thinking About Computing’ (Wing, 2009). The
presentation builds on Wing’s influential 2006 ‘Computational
Thinking’ paper in which she set out to ‘spread the joy, awe, and
power of computer science, aiming to make computational thinking
commonplace’ (Wing, 2006, p. 35).

In this course you will learn more about what computational

thinking is and why it is such a desirable skill – arguably the skill for
the twenty-first century.

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This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open

University course M269 Algorithms, data structures and computability.

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Learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:

 describe the skills that are involved in computational

thinking
 define and use the concepts of abstraction as
modelling and abstraction as encapsulation
 understand the distinctive nature of computational
thinking, when compared with engineering and
mathematical thinking
 be aware of a range of applications of computational
thinking in different disciplines.

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1 Computational thinking and

automation
To state more precisely what computational thinking is, we need to
consider the ideas of an algorithm and a computational problem.
We will think about these ideas in the next activity.

Activity 1 Algorithms and computational

problems
Look at Figure 2. This shows page 18 of John Gough’s Practical
Arithmetick in Four books, which is a tutorial maths book first
published in 1767. The text under the heading ‘General Rule’ gives
a description of a process for adding together three non-negative
integers, each written as a finite sequence of digits. (The fact that
three numbers are added is rather arbitrary: the process would
work just as well for adding together two numbers or indeed any
number of numbers.)

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Figure 2 Instructions for column addition (Gough, 1767)

View description - Figure 2 Instructions for column addition (Gough,

1767)

Explain whether this textual description is an algorithm according

to the following description of an algorithm.

An algorithm is a solution to a problem which has three properties:

 an algorithm consists of a step-by-step list of

instructions
 an algorithm is a finite process (this means it is
guaranteed to finish at some point)
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 the algorithm should solve any instance of the problem

that might arise.

View discussion - Activity 1 Algorithms and computational problems

Figure 3 (a) Human computers working on test flight calculations at the

predecessor of NASA in 1949 (b) two NASA employees in 1990 programming
a computer so it can automatically calibrate aircraft equipment

View description - Figure 3 (a) Human computers working on test flight

calculations at the predecessor ...

Having met the ideas of algorithms and computational problems,

let us state what computational thinking is not: computational
thinking is not about us humans following an algorithm when
carrying out the task of adding numbers on paper or in our head. It
is not about thinking like a computer - rather, computational
thinking is first and foremost thinking about computation. In
particular, computational thinking consists of the skills to:

 formulate a problem as a computational problem

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 construct a good computational solution (i.e. an

algorithm) for the problem, or explain why there is no
such solution.

A computational thinker can take a problem and state it sufficiently

precisely for it to be potentially solvable by an algorithm. Once the
problem has been stated in the right way, a computational thinker
tries to construct an algorithm that solves it. A computational
thinker won’t, however, be satisfied with just any solution: the
solution has to be a ‘good’ one. We will discuss two specific
properties of a good solution later on in this course: efficiency and
correctness. Finally, computational thinking goes beyond finding
solutions: if no good solution exists, one should be able to explain
why this is so. This topic, however, takes us beyond the scope of
this course into computability and computational complexity theory.

Most of the activities in this course involve watching extracts from

Wing’s presentation ‘Computational Thinking and Thinking About
Computing’. Remember to read through the activity before
watching the video.

1.1 Automation
Activity 2 Automation, abstraction and
modelling
5 minutes
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After you’ve watched the following extract of Wing’s talk, complete

this activity.

Video content is not available in this format.

Automation, abstraction and modelling

View transcript - Automation, abstraction and modelling

The aim of this activity is to get you to think about what Wing is
saying in the following, rather long but important, sentence: ‘… this
feedback loop that one has when you’re abstracting from some
physical-world phenomenon, creating a mathematical model of this
physical-world phenomenon, and then analysing the abstraction,
doing sorts of manipulations of those abstractions, and in fact
automating the abstraction, that then tells us more about the
physical-world phenomenon that we’re actually modelling.’

Place the following labels in the correct positions of the diagram

below. (Note: the diagram will not work with Internet Explorer 8, if
this is your usual browser you will need to use an alternate
browser to view the diagram.)

Interactive content is not available in this format.

View discussion - Activity 2 Automation, abstraction and modelling

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2 Computational thinking and

abstraction
In the next activity you will see Wing explain how computational
thinking involves the process of abstraction.

Activity 3 Abstraction
8 minutes

Watch the video and then complete this activity.

Video content is not available in this format.

Abstraction

View transcript - Abstraction

Wing talks about abstractions as a means of ignoring detail that is

not of interest. Consider the following description of an algorithm
for searching a paper and ink dictionary.

Given:

i. a dictionary
ii. a headword W which appears in the dictionary

to find the definition of W:

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 Begin the search with an entry that appears (roughly)

in the middle of the dictionary. Then there are three
possibilities:
1.The current entry’s headword is W. In this
case, the definition of W is the definition
of the current entry.
2.W appears alphabetically before the
current entry’s headword. In this case,
the entry with headword W must appear
in the first half of the dictionary. Look for
the word W, following the same approach,
in the first half of the dictionary.
3.W appears alphabetically after the current
entry’s headword. In this case, the entry
with headword W must appear in the
second half of the dictionary. Look for the
word W, following the same approach, in
the second half of the dictionary.

This is an informal description of an algorithm, but the steps are

sufficiently precise that a human should have no problem following
them. This algorithm depends crucially on the fact that the words in
a dictionary are alphabetically ordered. It also, however, ignores
some of the details of paper and ink dictionaries. Can you list of
few of these?
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Figure 4 A dictionary

View description - Figure 4 A dictionary

View discussion - Activity 3 Abstraction

Wing’s discussion of abstraction draws on a wide variety of

concepts. You have come across phrases such as ‘ignoring’ and
‘hiding information’, ‘levels’ and ‘layers’, ‘models’ and
‘implementation’. It has been left somewhat in the air how these all
hang together. So next, we will make the relations between them
explicit. To do so, we will distinguish between two kinds of
abstraction:

 abstraction as modelling
 abstraction as encapsulation.

Although Wing deals in great detail with the idea of abstraction as

modelling, she only hints at the concept of abstraction as
encapsulation. Both are, however, at play in computing.
Distinguishing between them will give you a better understanding
of the remainder of Wing’s story.

2.1 Models

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Figure 5 Abstraction and automation

View description - Figure 5 Abstraction and automation

Let us think more generally about the abstraction depicted in

Figure 5. For this purpose, we will be using the diagram in
Figure 6. Instead of Wing’s somewhat unwieldy expressions
‘mathematical model’ and ‘physical-world phenomenon’, we will
use the shorthands ‘model’ and ‘part of reality’.

The diagram in Figure 6 shows that abstraction as modelling can

be understood in terms of the relationship between a part of reality
and a model which represents the details of interest of this reality.
For this reason, models are sometimes also referred to as
representations.

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Figure 6 Diagrammatic representation of abstraction as modelling

View description - Figure 6 Diagrammatic representation of abstraction

as modelling

For the purpose of the current example, the part of reality that
we’re interested in is the paper and ink dictionary of Activity 3. The
algorithms in Section 1 for looking up words work with a model of a
dictionary as an alphabetically sorted list of headwords, each
paired with its definition. The model corresponds to how the data
that the algorithm works with are structured. This model captures
the essentials (i.e. that the dictionary consists of an alphabetically
sorted list of words and their definitions) and ignores certain details
(for example, that a physical dictionary is divided into pages of a
certain size and has a cover to protect it). In other words, the
irrelevant details are not reflected by the structure of the data that
the algorithm works with.

Activity 4 Representations
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Representations, including paintings and drawings, are models.

This is brilliantly illustrated by René Magritte’s famous painting of a
pipe with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (‘This is not a pipe’)
underneath (Figure 7). Explain how this painting brings home the
point that modelling involves two levels: the abstraction and the
reality which the abstraction models.

Figure 7 René Magritte’s painting The Treachery of Images (1928–9)

View description - Figure 7 René Magritte’s painting The Treachery of

Images (1928–9)

View discussion - Activity 4 Representations

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The part of reality for which one creates a model or representation

doesn’t need to be a static object such as a pipe or dictionary. It
can also be a process or system which changes over time. In that
case, the model will not only have to capture any enduring
properties of interest, but also any changes in time that are of
interest. For example, in astronomy there is a rich tradition of
building such models of the solar system (see Figure 8). The
purpose of such a model, known as an orrery, is to represent the
position of the planets relative to each other over time.

The invention of the orrery is usually attributed to George Graham

(1673–1751). Graham worked on this with the support of the 4th
Earl of Orrery, which explains the name. The tiny crank on the side
of the central cylinder in Figure 8 allows the model to be animated.
Turning the crank causes the (representations of the) planets to
follow a path around the (representation of the) Sun at the centre
of the model. Usually such an animated model is referred to as a
simulation.

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Figure 8 An orrery (a mechanical model of the solar system)

View description - Figure 8 An orrery (a mechanical model of the solar

system)

As with any model, an orrery ignores certain details of the part of

reality that it models. For example, compared with the scale of the
distances between the planets, the planets are too large. The
relationship between the solar system and an orrery is as depicted
in Figure 9.

Figure 9 Relationship between an orrery and the solar system

View description - Figure 9 Relationship between an orrery and the solar

system

2.2 Encapsulation
The model of the solar system in Figure 10 also illustrates the
second type of abstraction: abstraction as encapsulation. The

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brass cylinder in the middle of the device encloses a clockwork of

cogwheels similar to the one in Figure 10.

Figure 10 The inside of an orrery

View description - Figure 10 The inside of an orrery

This mechanism causes the small spheres representing the

planets to rotate around the centre at a velocity that is proportional
to the speed of the actual planets. The mechanism is hidden from
view for the casual user, who is only interested in the movement of
the planets. Figure 11 illustrates this other view of the orrery in
terms of two layers.

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Figure 11 The orrery as two layers

View description - Figure 11 The orrery as two layers

Generally, abstraction as encapsulation involves the two layers

shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12 The two layers involved in abstraction as encapsulation

View description - Figure 12 The two layers involved in abstraction as

encapsulation

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The layer through which the user interacts with the model is called
the interface. It hides the detailed workings of the model from the
user. The interface sits between the user and the layer at which
the model is implemented. The latter is responsible for making the
model do what it is supposed to do. This is where the automation
of the model takes place.

2.3 Encapsulation in computing

Abstraction as encapsulation is common everywhere in computing.
Sometimes it is referred to as ‘abstraction as information hiding’
(instead of encapsulation).

Let us consider an example. Our example will make use of the

Python programming language. This language is used throughout
M269 Algorithms, data structures and computability on which this
OpenLearn course is based. It was chosen because it is eminently
suitable for learning the basic concepts of computer science and
programming. It allows you to write concise, easily understood
programs. You should be able to follow most of the following
discussion if you have had some experience with an imperative
programming language.

The incredibly short Python program below will display the date
and current time (see Figure 13). It depends on a built-in Python
module which is imported in the first line.
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import time
print(time.ctime())

Figure 13 Execution of the small program above in the Python Interactive

Shell

How does time.ctime() work? We don’t know and we don’t need to

know! Someone has written the time module and documented its
interface, which contains the function ctime(). We can just use the
function without any knowledge whatsoever of its implementation.

However, under the bonnet the time module is itself a program,

written in C, another high-level programming language! The
programmers of the module, when they wrote it, only needed to
know C. They were able to ignore the details of the low-level
machine language that the C program would get translated into.

So now we have three layers of programming abstraction

(Figure 14).

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Figure 14 Three layers of abstraction as encapsulation

View description - Figure 14 Three layers of abstraction as encapsulation

Think about it: if layers of encapsulation did not exist, the short and
easily understood program to display the time (above) would be
impossible. We would have to deal directly with instructions written
in machine language. There would be many of them and they
would be in a language which is very hard for humans to
understand.

Programming abstraction doesn’t stop there. We can define new

abstractions of our own. For example the following function prints
the n times table up to 9 times n.”

def timesTable(n):
    for m in range(1, 10):
        print(m, 'times', n, 'is', m*n)

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Once this function is defined we can call it whenever we like

without having to bother again with the details.

timesTable(9)

In fact we can create a Python module that encapsulates this

function, so the detail is completely hidden! Suppose we name the
module demo. Then the timesTable function can be used from a
different Python program, like this:

from demo import timesTable

timesTable(7)

But now we can define a new function that depends on

timesTable. The function printUsersTimesTable below prompts the
user for a number and then uses timesTable to print the
corresponding times table (see Figure 15).

Figure 15 The result of the function printUsersTimesTable() when user enters

the number 6

def printUsersTimesTable():
    aNumber = input('Please enter your number: ')
    timesTable(int(aNumber))

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So we can build a hierarchy with any number of layers of

abstraction, with the detail of each layer hidden from those above
and each layer – apart from the bottom one – interacting with the
layer below via its interface.

Figure 16 A hierarchy of layers of abstraction (as encapsulation)

View description - Figure 16 A hierarchy of layers of abstraction (as

encapsulation)

The overall picture that emerges is one of a hierarchy of layers. As

illustrated in Figure 14, in such a hierarchy Layer 0 hides its details

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from Layer 1 above it, Layer 1 hides its details from Layer 2, etc.
Conversely, Layer 1 depends on Layer 0, Layer 2 depends on
Layer 1, etc.

Figure 14 also shows that such a hierarchy eventually bottoms out

at Layer 0. That is the layer at which the abstraction is
implemented in physical reality, i.e. a substrate/hardware. This
physical layer constrains what is possible at the layers that are
built on top of it. Nowadays, most computers are built using
electronic components. This is, however, by no means the only
possible physical substrate. When Charles Babbage (1791–1871)
designed the first programmable computer, he came up with a
steam-powered machine built of brass and iron. Babbage never
finished his machine, but recently part of it has been constructed
using Meccano (see Figure 17).

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Figure 17 Part of Babbage’s Analytical Engine constructed from Meccano

View description - Figure 17 Part of Babbage’s Analytical Engine

constructed from Meccano

Without going into detail, the idea of layers of abstraction in

computing is not restricted to programming languages. It extends,
for example, to operating systems and computer networks. In both,
a distinction is made between physical and logical layers. Actual
devices (e.g. hard drives and computers) and networking hardware
(e.g. copper wires) are part of the physical layer. The logical layer
contains abstractions (such as IP addresses and protocols).

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2.4 Why modelling and encapsulation

matter
Both abstraction as modelling and abstraction as encapsulation
allow us to manage complexity:

 In the case of modelling, this is done by discarding

information: we abstract away all that is irrelevant, to
leave a model that contains only what is actually of
interest.
 In the case of encapsulation it is done by hiding
information: we encapsulate the details of an
implementation/automation (of a model) behind an
interface.

These strategies are utterly essential to all computer modelling.

Without modelling we would be swamped by the complexity of the
real world and it would be impossible to define the problem
precisely enough to allow it to be solved using an algorithm.
Without encapsulation we would be swamped by the detail of the
‘computer world’ and would find it impossible to deal with the
complexity required to implement algorithms as computer
programs.

Activity 5 Modelling and encapsulation

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In answer to Activity 2 you were asked to construct the diagram in

Figure 18. Describe where modelling and encapsulation fit into this
diagram.

Figure 18 Abstraction and automation

View description - Figure 18 Abstraction and automation

View discussion - Activity 5 Modelling and encapsulation

2.5 Computational thinking: the

overview diagram
The aim of this subsection is to draw together some of the
concepts you have encountered so far. Consider once more the
diagram illustrating some of Wing’s ideas (Figure 19).

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Figure 19 Abstraction and automation

View description - Figure 19 Abstraction and automation

The three main components in the diagram are:

 a physical-world phenomenon
 a mathematical model
 an automaton.

How do these relate to the concepts you met in Section 1, namely:

 real-world problem
 computational problem
 algorithm and data structures?

Let us start with Wing’s use of the term ‘mathematical model’. As

we will now explain, Wing’s notion of a mathematical model is
linked to that of a computational problem. According to Wing, a
mathematical model is an abstraction of the physical-world

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phenomenon of interest. It ignores irrelevant detail. It also is the

point of departure for automation. The fact that it is a mathematical
model means that it is sufficiently precise to be used as a starting
point for creating an automaton. Now, you may recall that we
defined a computational problem as a problem that is expressed
sufficiently precisely that it is possible to attempt to build an
algorithm to solve it. In other words, Wing’s mathematical model is
nothing other than a computational problem.

Wing’s physical-world phenomenon is abstracted by the

mathematical model, just like a computational problem provides an
abstraction of a real-world problem.

Algorithms and data structures form the link between a

computational problem and its automation. Finding algorithms and
data structures is part of automating. When these are then
implemented as a program and executed, they provide a machine
that solves the problem. In Wing’s words, the resulting machine –
or automaton – automates the abstraction.

The complexity of the machine, as we have just discussed, is

managed by having a series of encapsulated layers.

To sum all this up, we can refine the diagram of Figure 19 as

shown in Figure 20.

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Figure 20 Computational thinking overview diagram

View description - Figure 20 Computational thinking overview diagram

Whereas the core of this diagram represents artefacts (real-world

and computational problems, machines) and their relations
(models, solves, and expresses), the green arrows indicate the
actions that a computational thinker engages in (i.e. create,
transform, implement and learn).

2.6 Varieties of abstraction

In the next video clip, Wing compares and contrasts abstraction in
computational thinking with abstraction in mathematics and

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engineering. In the following activity you will make these

comparisons explicit.

Activity 6 Computational, mathematical and

engineering thinking
20 minutes

Parts 1-8
Watch the video and complete the activity by ticking the
appropriate boxes.

Video content is not available in this format.

Computational, mathematical and engineering thinking

View transcript - Computational, mathematical and engineering thinking

Part 1
1. Which of the following use formal notation?

Computational thinking

Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 1

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Part 2
2.Which of the following involve at least two layers?

Computational thinking

Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 2

Part 3
3. For which of the following are beauty and elegance measures of
goodness?

Computational thinking

Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 3

Part 4
4. For which of the following is correctness a measure of
goodness?

Computational thinking
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Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 4

Part 5
5. For which of the following is efficiency a measure of goodness?

Computational thinking

Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 5

Part 6
6. For which of the following are usability, modifiability,
maintainability and cost measures of goodness?

Computational thinking

Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 6

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Part 7
7. Which of the following are constrained by physics?

Computational thinking

Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 7

Part 8
8. Which of the following can go beyond physics?

Computational thinking

Mathematical thinking

Engineering thinking

View discussion - Part 8

2.7 Virtual worlds

Though engineering and computing have much in common, Wing
argues that one big difference between the two is that computing
allows us to escape from the constraints of the physical world.
First, however, she points out that automatons (i.e. entities that

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carry out automation) are constrained by physics in the sense that

they require a physical substrate/hardware to exist and work. In
the end, any algorithm can only run on a real machine – a machine
made of hardware – whether it comprises electronic components,
brass and iron, or brain tissue.

Let us pursue the idea of how computing allows us to step outside

the realm of physical constraints. For that we need to revisit the
idea of abstraction as modelling. You have seen that algorithms
can work with abstractions of real things such as paper and ink
dictionaries. Perhaps more spectacularly, algorithms can also work
with abstractions of things that do not exist, at least not in the
physical world around us.

Activity 7 Abstractions of the non-physical

Can you give an example of an algorithm that works with
abstractions of non-physical things? Hint: You can find such an
example in Section 1 of this course.

View discussion - Activity 7 Abstractions of the non-physical

Wing gives a further example of abstractions in computing that

model something (physically) non-existent. She discusses virtual
worlds, such as Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual world
populated by avatars. Avatars are computer-animated characters
that are controlled by real people – computer users. The avatars
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can do many things that we are familiar with in the real world,
including walking around, talking to people, and interacting with
objects. They can, however, also do things that are not possible in
the real world, such as teleport from one location to a
geographically distant other location. This is another instance
where the automation of abstractions allows us to go beyond the
things that can exist in the physical world. Note the big difference
here between computing and conventional engineering. Engineers
are generally interested in creating artefacts that are physically
possible – what would be the point of designing a bridge that
cannot be built?

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3 Computational thinking everywhere

At the very beginning of this course, computational thinking was
presented as a desirable skill – arguably the skill for the twenty-
first century. Why? Well, in recent years, computational thinking
has led to exciting developments and discoveries in a number of
fields. This has caused a demand for people with computational
thinking skills to move these fields forward even further. In this
section, you will encounter some of these applications of
computational thinking. Watch the videos, but don’t worry if you
can’t follow all of it. We want you to get a feel for the big picture –
you’re not expected to remember everything in detail.

Activity 8 Computational biology

4 minutes

Watch the following video.

Video content is not available in this format.

Computational biology

View transcript - Computational biology

Activity 9 Model checking

8 minutes

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Watch the following video.

Video content is not available in this format.

Model checking

View transcript - Model checking

3.1 Machine learning

Machine learning is a technique for automatically finding patterns
in large amounts of data. Watch the following video extract in
which Wing discusses several applications of machine learning.

Activity 10 Machine learning

15 minutes

Video content is not available in this format.

Machine learning

View transcript - Machine learning

Wing gives the example of basketball coaches who use machine

learning to find out which skills distinguish good players. Once they
know this, they can teach those skills to their own players.
Machine learning makes this possible by automatically finding
patterns in the behaviour of professional players from a large
collection of video recordings.
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Describe this use of machine learning in terms of abstraction as

modelling.

View discussion - Activity 10 Machine learning

Activity 11 Chemistry, physics, economics …

6 minutes

Watch the following video.

Video content is not available in this format.

Chemistry, physics, economics...

View transcript - Chemistry, physics, economics...

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Conclusion
The underlying theme of this course has been ‘computational
thinking’. We’ve defined this as consisting of the skills to:

 formulate a problem as a computational problem

 construct a good computational solution (an algorithm)
for the problem, or explain why there is no such
solution.

We introduced the idea of an algorithm with two examples: an

algorithm for addition and one for dictionary search. You learned
about the concept of abstraction and its two varieties: abstraction
as modelling and abstraction as encapsulation. We contrasted and
compared computational thinking with both mathematical and
engineering thinking. You have also been shown the ‘bigger
picture’: the way that computational thinking is shaping research in
many disciplines, ranging from biology and physics to economics
and sport science.

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Glossary
abstraction
provides a handle on complexity by either ignoring detail by means of a
model, or hiding detail through the use of encapsulation.
algorithm
A precisely stated, step-by-step list of instructions.
data structure
A way of organising data for use by an algorithm.
encapsulation
Hiding details of an implementation from users. This is achieved through an
interface that sits between the user (or client) and the implementation.
interface
An interface sits between a user (or client) and an implementation. It hides the
details of the implementation from the users or clients of the implementation.
(See encapsulation.)
model
A representation or abstraction of a part of reality which ignores certain
details.
simulation
A working model of a process or a system which changes over time.

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References
Gough, J. (1767) Practical Arithmetick in Four books, Dublin.

Miller, B. N. and Ranum, D. L. (2011) Problem Solving with

Algorithms and Data Structures using Python, 2nd edn, Sherwood,
Oregon, Frankin, Beedle & Associates.

Wing, J. M. (2006) ‘Computational Thinking’, Communications of the

ACM, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 33–5; also available online at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wing/publications/Wing06.pdf (Accessed
20 December 2012).

Wing, J. M. (2009) ‘Computational Thinking and Thinking About

Computing’, Evening Lecture Series, 2 September 2009, Florida
Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Florida, US [Online].
Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Pq4N-iE4I
(Accessed 20 December 2012).

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Acknowledgements
This course was written by Paul Piwek (with input from Alistair
Willis for Activities 1 and 3).

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and
conditions), this content is made available under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary, used under

licence and not subject to Creative Commons licence. See terms
and conditions. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following
sources for permission to reproduce material in this course:

Course image: Creativity103 in Flickr made available under Creative

Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.

Photograph of Jeannette Wing in Sections 2 and 3 from:

www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2010/May/may12_wingtoleadcsd.shtml

Figure 1: Theo van Doesburg:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Theo_van_doesburg_de_koe.jpg

Figure 3a: NASA

Figure 3b: NASA

Figure 7: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2013

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Figure 8: Professor Mark E. Bailey / Armagh Observatory

Figure 10: Courtesy of Dr David Goodchild

Figure 17: Courtesy of Tim Robinson

Videos of Jeannette Wing’s lecture in Section 3: © Florida Institute

for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC)

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any

have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased
to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Don't miss out:

If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be
interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free
learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open
University - www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses

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Activity 1 Algorithms and

computational problems
Discussion
First, we need to consider whether the text describes a step-by-
step list of instructions. This is not always obvious. At some points
it does and at some points it doesn’t.

At many points the text does provide instructions to be carried out

sequentially, such as:

 ‘place the numbers so that each figure may stand

directly underneath (…) the figures of the same value’
 ‘begin the addition at the first place’.

Although other parts of the instructions are not explicitly presented

as a list of instructions, it is easy to see how the textual passage
could be mapped onto such a list. In that list, certain instructions
would be repeated for each of the columns involved (‘then proceed
in the same manner … from place to place to the last’).

So, let’s assume that the text does have the first property. Does it
also have the other two properties?

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According to the second property, the process should be finite.

This is indeed the case. The numbers being added will each have
a finite number of digits, so only a finite number of columns will be
involved, and the process only requires a small number of steps at
each column.

Finally, the process does apply to any instance of the problem,

where the ‘instances of the problem’ are all combinations of three
integers, each represented by a finite sequence of digits in the
range 0–9. The text leaves it implicit what instances the algorithm
is intended to apply to.

The precise specification of the ‘instance of the problem’ can be

thought of as part of the task of formulating a problem as a
computational problem. By a computational problem, we mean "a
problem that is stated sufficiently precisely such that one can
attempt to write an algorithm to solve it."

Back to Session 1 Activity 1

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Activity 2 Automation, abstraction

and modelling
Discussion
It is important to have a good grasp of this diagram. It provides a
high-level overview of the key ingredients of computational thinking
and how they are related to each other. In the remainder of this
course, we will flesh out some of the details that lie behind this
diagram.

Back to Session 1 Activity 2

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Activity 3 Abstraction
Discussion
Details of a paper and ink dictionary that come to mind include: the
size and thickness of its pages, the colour of its cover and the size
of the printed font. None of these played a role in the algorithm that
is described above. Perhaps the most salient abstraction relates to
the fact that paper and ink dictionaries are made of pages. They
are not simply a list of words and definitions. Rather, the words are
distributed across the pages of the dictionary. The algorithm
doesn’t take into account the distribution of the words in a
dictionary across pages: for example it would work equally well
with a dictionary printed on a single, enormously long paper scroll.

Back to Session 2 Activity 1

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Activity 4 Representations
Discussion
When looking at this painting, my initial thought was: ‘Look, a pipe
– why does it say in French that this is not a pipe?’ Then it dawned
on me that of course this is indeed not a pipe: it’s merely a painting
of a pipe. With this painting, Magritte reminded me that
representations usually involve two levels: in this case the painting
of a pipe and a real pipe on which the painting is based. The
former is an abstraction which ignores some of the properties of
actual pipes (for example, that they have a smell, usually of
tobacco). Interestingly, the title of this painting is La trahison des
images (The Treachery of Images).

Back to Session 2 Activity 2

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Activity 5 Modelling and

encapsulation
Discussion
Modelling is involved when one creates an abstraction for a
physical-world phenomenon. Modelling results in a mathematical
model which can then be automated. To deal with the complexity
of automating a model, one can use encapsulation.

Back to Session 2 Activity 3

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 1
Discussion
In all three disciplines, the use of formal/mathematical notation is
common:

Back to Session 2 Part 2

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 2
Discussion
Mathematics typically works only with a single layer: there is no
distinction between the ‘properties of interest’ and the ‘ignored
detail’. The abstraction is studied in its own right, without reference
to some other layer which it represents. Of course, this is an
idealisation. Many areas of mathematics did start as a
representation of some aspect of the real world. For example,
geometry began with Euclidean geometry, which was intended as
a model of physical space.

Both engineering and computing rely on at least two layers. At the

basis, there is a layer grounded in the real world. This is the layer
in which the problem of interest lies (for example a bridge or car in
engineering). In addition to this layer, there is at least one further
layer which ignores certain of its details. For instance, an engineer
may use mechanics to calculate the forces operating on a bridge
when a car crosses it. In doing so, the engineer will abstract away
(or ignore), the colour in which the bridge is painted, the brand of
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the car, and many other things that are not relevant for calculating
the forces in question. We’ve seen that a computer scientist who
simulates a dictionary may, similarly, ignore certain properties of a
physical dictionary.

Back to Session 2 Part 3

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 3
Discussion
In all three disciplines, beauty and elegance are criteria that are
used to compare competing abstractions. These are, however,
more central in mathematics, where the abstraction is often judged
in its own right, without reference to an underlying reality that it
represents.

Back to Session 2 Part 4

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 4
Discussion
In connection with this criterion, Wing asks in particular: ‘Does it do
the right thing?’ and ‘Does it do anything?’ These questions are
clearly relevant for both computational and engineering
abstractions. It is perhaps less clear what they mean in the context
of mathematics. Arguably, since mathematics is about the
abstraction itself, one can’t really distinguish correct from incorrect
abstractions because there is nothing to compare them with.
However, even when dealing with pure abstractions, we may want
to make sure that they are consistent. A mathematical theory that
states that a mathematical object both does and does not have
some property would be in violation of this criterion (e.g. a theory
which says that two lines cross and do not cross each other).

Back to Session 2 Part 5

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 5
Discussion
In connection with computing, Wing mentions three dimensions of
efficiency: time (how fast?), space (how much space?) and energy
(how much power?). Each of the three efficiency criteria can also
be applied in engineering contexts (e.g. how fast can the engine
run, how much space does it occupy, and how much energy does
it consume?). None of these considerations has a clear equivalent
in mathematics.

Back to Session 2 Part 6

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 6
Discussion
All of these practical considerations are important in both
engineering and computing contexts. They are not directly
applicable to mathematics.

Back to Session 2 Part 7

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 7
Discussion
Both engineering and computing are constrained by physical
reality. For example, the classical model of computing uses the bit
(0 or 1) as the basic unit of information. It is constrained by
whichever physical means is used to represent a bit (whether it be
an electrical current or, for instance, the position of a mechanical
lever). The physical hardware constrains, among other things, how
quickly the state of a bit can be changed (from 0 to 1 or vice
versa).

Back to Session 2 Part 8

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Activity 6 Computational,
mathematical and engineering
thinking
Part 8
Discussion
Mathematics, as the study of pure abstractions, is independent of
physical reality. Computing, though always constrained by the
physical layer at which the hardware operates, allows us to build
on top of the hardware layer software layers that model non-
existent realities. By automating these virtual realities, it allows us
to see and even experience realities that go beyond what is
physically possible.

Back to Session 2 Part 9

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Activity 7 Abstractions of the non-

physical
Discussion
You saw an example in Section 1 when you learned about the
algorithm for column addition. This algorithm works with non-
negative integers. At first sight, it might seem that integers are
physical objects. After all, can’t we write them down using pen and
paper? Recall, however, Activity 4 (Ceci n’est pas une pipe). In
that activity you studied the distinction between
representations/abstractions and the reality they model. When you
write down a ‘2’ (or any other number) on a piece of paper, this is a
representation of the number 2, not the actual number. Why?
Suppose that what you wrote down was the number 2 itself. In that
case, if you erased it, 2 would cease to exist, and if you copied it,
you would have created another number 2. That would be absurd!
When you write down a ‘2’, this is merely a representation, not the
actual number. Other people can write down a ‘2’ as well, and
thereby talk about the same number that you’re talking about when
using a ‘2’.

Perhaps this has set you wondering what numbers are, if they
aren’t physical objects. Unfortunately, philosophers have been at
loggerheads about this question since the ancient Greeks started
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discussing it. Many mathematicians subscribe to a view

championed by the philosopher Plato (429–347 BCE), who
proposed that numbers exist, but not in space and time; rather
they inhabit what is known as ‘platonic heaven’.

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Activity 10 Machine learning

Discussion
One can view this use of machine learning as an attempt to
automatically build a model of a good basketball player. Such a
model is an abstraction that needs to capture the skills that
distinguish a good player and ignores anything else. At a different
level, machine learning is itself based on a model of learning by
humans or animals. Being an abstraction, it ignores many of the
details of human and animal learning, while preserving some key
properties (in particular, the idea that one can learn from
examples).

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Figure 1 Abstraction, a recurring

theme in this course, illustrated by
four representations of a cow by
Theo van Doesburg, 1917, 1918
Description
The figure comprises four artworks: two drawings at the top and
two paintings beneath. Starting at the top left-hand image and
moving clockwise the pieces demonstrate increasing abstraction.

The top left-hand artwork is an outline sketch of a cow, and

appears unfinished. The second drawing is more abstract and has
rectangles superimposed on the cow’s body.

The first painting (at the bottom right-hand side of the figure)
depicts a cow on a green background, but the cow is composed of
blocks (mostly rectangular) of solid colour.

The final painting is comprised entirely of different-sized blocks of

solid colour. Four blocks are green and represent the background.
The cow depicted in the earlier pieces is represented by
strategically arranged blocks of blue, black, red and yellow.

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Figure 2 Instructions for column

addition (Gough, 1767)
Description
The figure shows a scan of page 18 of John Gough’s textbook
Practical Arithmetick in Four books. The text reads:

Addition

20. Addition is the joining or collecting several numbers into one,

or finding a number which shall be equal to any given numbers
together.

General Rule

Let the numbers marked A B C, be given to be added.

54327  A

 8062  B

 5041  C

---------

67430

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Place the numbers so that each figure may stand directly

underneath (or in the same perpendicular row with) the figures of
the same value, that is: units under units, tens under tens,
hundreds under hundreds, &c.

Then drawing a line under them; begin the Addition at the first
place (or units) and add together all the figures in that place, and if
their sum be under ten, set it down below the line underneath its
own place; but if their sum be more than ten, set down only the
overplus above the ten (or tens) and so many tens as the sum of
these units amount to, carry to the place of tens, adding them and
the figures which stand in the place of tens together; then proceed
in the same manner to the third place or hundreds, and so from
place to place to the last, and set down the whole sum of the last
place.

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Figure 3 (a) Human computers

working on test flight calculations
at the predecessor of NASA in 1949
(b) two NASA employees in 1990
programming a computer so it can
automatically calibrate aircraft
equipment
Description
The left-hand side of this figure is a black-and-white photograph of
human computers sitting behind desks doing calculations by hand
with pen and paper.

The right-hand side shows a colour photograph of two NASA

employees. One is sitting behind a desktop computer while the
other is standing next to an array of electronic equipment.

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Figure 4 A dictionary
Description
The figure shows a photograph of the top half of page 37 of Collins
English Dictionary. The photograph illustrates that each page of the
dictionary consists of a list of entries, with the headword of each
entry in bold font, and the definition of the term in normal font.

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Figure 5 Abstraction and

automation
Description
Three rectangles are laid out as a triangle with one rectangle at the
top and two at the bottom. Arrows link the rectangles in a
clockwise direction.

The rectangle at the bottom left contains the words ‘physical-world

phenomenon’ and is linked via an arrow to the top rectangle called
‘mathematical model’. The arrow between them is labelled ‘create
an abstraction’.

The rectangle at the top, labelled ‘mathematical model’, is

connected via an arrow to the third rectangle at the bottom right,
which is called ‘automation’. The arrow between them is labelled
‘automate’.

Finally, the ‘automation’ rectangle at the bottom right is linked to

the ‘physical-world phenomenon’ rectangle at the bottom left via an
arrow. The arrow is labelled ‘tells us more about’.

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Figure 6 Diagrammatic
representation of abstraction as
modelling
Description
This figure contains two rectangles. The one at the top is labelled ‘model’. The one at
the bottom is labelled ‘part of reality’. An arrow labelled ‘represented/modelled by’
goes up from the ‘part of reality’ rectangle to the ‘model’ rectangle. Another arrow,
labelled ‘ignores detail of’, goes down from the ‘model’ rectangle to the ‘part of
reality’ rectangle.

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Figure 7 René Magritte’s painting

The Treachery of Images (1928–9)
Description
Magritte’s painting comprises a realistic image of a smoking pipe with the French
words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe.’ underneath it.

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Figure 8 An orrery (a mechanical

model of the solar system)
Description
A photograph of an orrery, which is a mechanical model of the solar system. This
orrery consists of a brass cylinder on a three-legged stand. There is a small crank on
the side of the central cylinder. From the middle of the cylinder a short rod sticks up
vertically. At the end of this rod is a brass sphere representing the Sun. Several further
long horizontal rods are connected to the short vertical rod. Each of the horizontal
rods has a short upward-pointing rod at the end with a sphere on top. These spheres
represent the planets. Some of the vertical rods for the planets have further short
horizontal rods at the end of which are upward-pointing rods that support moons.

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Figure 9 Relationship between an

orrery and the solar system
Description
This figure contains two rectangles. The one at the top is labelled ‘orrery’. The one at
the bottom is labelled ‘solar system’. An arrow labelled ‘represented/modelled by’
goes up from the ‘solar system’ rectangle to the ‘orrery’ rectangle. Another arrow,
labelled ‘ignores detail of’, goes down from the ‘orrery’ rectangle to the ‘solar
system’ rectangle.

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Figure 10 The inside of an orrery

Description
A photograph of the inside of an orrery. It consists of a complex jumble of cogwheels.

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Figure 11 The orrery as two layers

Description
This figure contains two rectangles. The one at the top is labelled ‘the interface of the
orrery: moving spheres that represent the sun and the planets’. The one at the bottom
is labelled ‘the hidden/encapsulated mechanism that drives the movement of the
spheres’. An arrow labelled ‘hides detail from’ goes up from the bottom rectangle to
the top rectangle. Another arrow, labelled ‘depends on’, goes down from the top
rectangle to the bottom rectangle.

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Figure 12 The two layers involved in

abstraction as encapsulation
Description
This figure contains two rectangles. The one at the top is labelled ‘the interface: a
layer through which users interact with the model’. The one at the bottom is labelled
‘the implementation: a layer that implements the model’. An arrow labelled ‘hides
detail from’ goes up from the bottom rectangle to the top rectangle. Another arrow,
labelled ‘depends on’, goes down from the top rectangle to the bottom rectangle.

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Figure 14 Three layers of

abstraction as encapsulation
Description
In this figure the three layers of programming abstraction are
represented by three rectangles. The top rectangle is labelled ‘the
Python program for printing the current date and time’. The
rectangle just below it is labelled ‘the Python time module written in
C’. The rectangle below that is labelled ‘the machine code program
that will actually run on the computer’.

Each rectangle is linked to the one below it with two arrows: the
arrow on the left points upwards and is labelled ‘hides detail from’,
the arrow on the left points downwards and is labelled ‘depends
on’.

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Figure 16 A hierarchy of layers of

abstraction (as encapsulation)
Description
This figure represents a hierarchy of layers, although because the
structure of the hierarchy is repetitive, three dots are used to
indicate that some of the layers have been deliberately left out.

The top rectangle is labelled ‘Layer n’ and is linked to the rectangle

below by two arrows. The left-hand arrow points up from the
rectangle below and is labelled ‘hides detail from’. The right-hand
arrow points down to the rectangle below and is labelled ‘depends
on’. This pattern continues, represented by three dots. At the
bottom of the figure Layer 1 and Layer 0 are shown.

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Figure 17 Part of Babbage’s

Analytical Engine constructed from
Meccano
Description
A photograph of part of Babbage’s Analytical Engine constructed from Meccano.
Green metal strips are used to create a frame inside of which are a number of rods and
wheels.

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Figure 18 Abstraction and

automation
Description
Three rectangles are laid out as a triangle with one rectangle at the
top and two at the bottom. Arrows link the rectangles in a
clockwise direction.

The rectangle at the bottom left contains the words ‘physical-world

phenomenon’ and is linked via an arrow to the top rectangle called
‘mathematical model’. The arrow between them is labelled ‘create
an abstraction’.

The rectangle at the top, labelled ‘mathematical model’, is

connected via an arrow to the third rectangle at the bottom right,
which is called ‘automation’. The arrow between them is labelled
‘automate’.

Finally, the ‘automation’ rectangle at the bottom right is linked to

the ‘physical-world phenomenon’ rectangle at the bottom left via an
arrow. The arrow is labelled ‘tells us more about’.

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Figure 19 Abstraction and

automation
Description
Three rectangles are laid out as a triangle with one rectangle at the
top and two at the bottom. Arrows link the rectangles in a
clockwise direction.

The rectangle at the bottom left contains the words ‘physical-world

phenomenon’ and is linked via an arrow to the top rectangle called
‘mathematical model’. The arrow between them is labelled ‘create
an abstraction’.

The rectangle at the top, labelled ‘mathematical model’, is

connected via an arrow to the third rectangle at the bottom right,
which is called ‘automation’. The arrow between them is labelled
‘automate’.

Finally, the ‘automation’ rectangle at the bottom right is linked to

the ‘physical-world phenomenon’ rectangle at the bottom left via an
arrow. The arrow is labelled ‘tells us more about’.

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Figure 20 Computational thinking

overview diagram
Description
This figure is a diagram with three principal items that are arranged
as sitting at the corners of a triangle. At the bottom left is a cloud
labelled ‘REAL-WORLD PROBLEM’. At the top is a rectangle
labelled ‘COMPUTATIONAL PROBLEM’. At the bottom right is a
rectangle labelled ‘MACHINE’.

Additionally, in between the ‘COMPUTATIONAL PROBLEM’ and

‘MACHINE’ rectangles sits an item labelled ‘algorithms and
abstract data types’. From each of these three items an arrow
labelled ‘models’ points to the ‘REAL-WORLD PROBLEM’ cloud.

The ‘MACHINE’ rectangle is linked with the ‘algorithms and

abstract data types’ item with an arrow labelled ‘expresses’.

There is also an arrow from the ‘algorithms and abstract data

types’ item pointing to the ‘COMPUTATIONAL PROBLEM’
rectangle. This arrow is labelled ‘solves’.

Inside the ‘MACHINE’ rectangle is number of items arranged in a

hierarchy. At the top is a ‘program’ and at the bottom is ‘hardware’.
The bit in between is not fully specified, as indicated by three
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vertical dots, but includes ‘machine code’. Each pair of items in the
hierarchy is linked with an upward-pointing arrow labelled ‘hides
detail from’ and a downward-pointing arrow labelled ‘depends on’.

Finally, moving back to the top level of the diagram, a set of green
arrows link some of the items. A green arrow labelled ‘create an
abstraction’ points from the ‘REAL-WORLD PROBLEM’ cloud to
the ‘COMPUTATIONAL PROBLEM’ rectangle. A green arrow
labelled ‘transform’ leads from ‘COMPUTATIONAL PROBLEM’ to
‘algorithms and abstract data types’. From ‘algorithms and abstract
data types’ a green arrow labelled ‘implement’ points to the
‘MACHINE’ rectangle. Finally, a green arrow labelled ‘learn more
about’ goes from the ‘MACHINE’ to the ‘REAL-WORLD
PROBLEM’ cloud.

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Automation, abstraction and

modelling
Transcript
Computing! Let's first talk about computing. Computing is what I
like to call the automation of abstraction. This is quite abstract and
I will try and explain what I mean by this but I like to think about
computing with these two ‘A’s: automation and abstraction. It really
is this feedback loop that one has when you are abstracting from
some physical-world phenomenon creating a mathematical model
of the physical-world phenomenon and then analysing the
abstraction doing some manipulations of the abstraction and in fact
automating the abstraction, which then tells us more about the
physical-world phenomenon that we are actually modelling. When I
talk about automation and this is the whole of the talk that I am
going to give so I am just going to give this as a side note. When I
talk about automation I am very careful to include that the
automaton can be a human or it can be a machine. After all
humans compute, we may not be as fast as machines but in fact
there is some ways humans are much, much better computers,
than machines. In other words there are still some tasks that
humans can solve better than machines. Vision is one example.
Speech, natural language processing. A lot of challenges of

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artificial intelligence are put forth for us as scientists because

machines still can’t do them as well as humans but that is just a
base case. I would also like to talk about humans and machines,
together, in fact, networks of humans and machines together as an
automaton. So think now that you can bring together the
intelligence of a human with the intelligence of a machine,
networks of them, that itself is collective intelligence, that could be
an automaton in my world of automation. This is quite a powerful
notion, very unusual. Save that thought because I am going to
come back to it at the end of my talk. As I said that is just part of
the picture with respect to computing and computer science but
that is really not what I am going to talk about for the most of my
talk. I am really going to focus on the abstraction part of
computing.

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Abstraction
Transcript
Computational thinking is all about the process of abstraction. Let
me explain what I mean by that. First of all, it is choosing the right
abstraction. Not every abstraction is going to be appropriate for the
problem you are trying to solve. So first you choose an abstraction
and then by definition of abstraction are ignoring irrelevant detail
and encapsulating in this abstract model the details of importance.
That means I’m immediately talking about at least two levels of
interest. The level I am ignoring the detail from and the level of
interest so the abstraction process immediately means that you
are talking about at least two levels of abstraction, and in fact the
way in which computer scientists deal with scale and complexity in
the kind of artefacts that we build and design is through layers of
abstraction. That allows us to focus at each layer only on the
properties or behaviours of interest and then we build these
complex systems by layering or other means of composition. So
when we talk about abstraction it’s not just the abstraction or the
particular model. It’s the layers and also the relationships between
the layers and because we usually define these abstract models in
very precise terms, mathematical terms, we are able to define the
relationships between these layers also precisely in mathematics.

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In fact all of what I said is as we do in mathematics. After all it is

not that computer scientists invented abstraction. Mathematicians
and scientists use abstractions all the time. What’s different is that
in computing we are always operating at least two layers of
abstraction at the same time and we are very formal about the
relationship between the two layers.

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Computational, mathematical and

engineering thinking
Transcript
So this isn’t anything new from what mathematicians do but in
computing we don’t just invent abstractions for the beauty and
elegance of the abstraction as mathematicians tend to strive for.
We have other concerns that constrain the abstractions we
choose. So in particular I would like to talk about the measures of
a good abstraction in computational thinking. The first and
foremost typical question a computer scientist would ask is, ‘how
efficient is this. Is this the most efficient way to solve the problem’,
and when I talk about efficiency I talk about it in terms of space
and time. Is this the fastest way to get from here to there? Is this a
procedure which is going to require the least amount of space for
that space and time? And I think what is most interesting right now
is there is a lot of interest in what I would call the third dimension of
analysing the complexity of the kinds of abstractions that we invent
and that has to do with energy. There is so much interest now in a
society and the administration on energy and I think of computing
as a discipline needs to revisit a lot of the abstractions we have
invented already in terms of this third dimension. So for those of
you who are researchers in computer science I advocate that we

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are going to have to throw out all our algorithm text books and
rewrite them all in terms of these three dimensions now. The other
measure of goodness for the abstractions that computer scientists
like to invent is correctness. After all when you are writing a
program or building a system you want it to do the right thing and
so we always ask not only how fast does this, say algorithm,
perform but does it do the right thing? And what does, does it do
the right thing mean? We usually ask does the program compute
the right answer and asking that question alone opens up a lot of
research questions. But we also wanted it to do something useful
so it is not enough that it does the right thing we actually want the
answer to be spit out eventually and that is the question, does the
program produce an answer? There are complexity results that
show that this is not always an easy question to answer, and then
of course there is the other ‘ilities’ if you will when we look at a
particular abstraction and judge whether it is good or not.
Simplicity and elegance as we have for mathematics, usability,
modifiability, maintainability, cost and so on. Now if you look at this
list you will say, well that is no different from good engineering, and
so in fact computational thinking or computing very much draws on
mathematical thinking and draws from engineering thinking and
comes together in terms of the automation of the kinds of
abstractions we build. What I would like to … I promise that I will
say a few more high level remarks and then I will get into some

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concrete examples. But I like to think that computational thinking

really does draw on mathematical and engineering thinking, it
draws on mathematics certainly as its foundation but we in
computing are unconstrained by the physics of the underlying …
we are constrained by the physics of the underlying machines. So,
in the end there is going to be some machine or there is going to
be some human brain and we are in terms of what we can execute
or automate are going to be constrained. So a typical computer
like this is going to have finite memory, it can only go so fast and
so it is constrained by the physics of this device. The brain
scientists are trying to understand the physical and intellectual
limitations of our brain as an automaton. Computational thinking
certainly draws on engineering since our systems interact with the
real world. However we in computing can build virtual worlds,
worlds that are unconstrained by physical reality and so when you
interact in a virtual world. So how many people have heard of
second life. Second Life is a virtual world which you can enter and
this virtual world defies the laws of physics. You have avatars who
fly around, you have corpse-like beings that die and come alive
again. That’s not like in the real world so what is it in computing
that enables this kind of defying the laws of nature, building worlds
that are virtual. It’s the software. Software enables these physical
devices to be beyond the real world. When I talk about
computational thinking, I really mean the concept and not the

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artefact that computer scientists produce. This is a little abstract, I

promise to get a little more concrete. And finally, I talk about
computational thinking as being something for everyone
everywhere. It will be a reality when it is so integral to our
endeavours that it disappears as an explicit philosophy. So being
more specific, here is unfortunately a laundry list of what I would
say computational thinking concepts and those of you who are
computer scientists or engineers or mathematicians will recognise
many of these classes of abstractions. What I mean by putting this
list down is not for all you to understand all this of this, but just to
say that I distinguish between computational thinking and
computer literacy, that is how to use Word, or Excel, PowerPoint.
Computational thinking is not that and I distinguish between
computational thinking and computer programming because
computing is a lot more than computer programming. Ideally I
could come up with a better list if you will rather than this potpourri
of concepts. I’m actually working on that as I speak.

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Computational biology
Transcript
So now what I wanted to do is convince you that computational
thinking has already influenced other disciplines. So let’s start with
one discipline influenced by many different computational methods
or concepts. So who can guess what that discipline might be?
Don’t be shy. Scream out the answer, scream out any answer. Yes
sir – that is an interesting answer. I’ll come back to that one.
Medicine – is close to my answer. Biology, biology – that is my
answer. It is just an answer. Computational thinking has greatly
influenced biology to the point now that we have biology and
computer sciences working together hand-in-hand but more than
that we have now started to produce a new generation of
computational biologists. Hold on, you are now answering my next
question. My next question is; what was the tipping point, at which
point did the biologist look over their shoulder and say, ‘you
computer scientists have something to bring to the table. You
computer scientists are making me think differently, making me
approach my problem in a new way.’ Answer is … right, it was the
shotgun algorithm that expedited the sequencing of the human
genome that all of a sudden caused a lot of interest by the
biologists, by the whole medical and biological communities who

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said hey there is something to computer science, to algorithms,

more than just processing power. That is the point I am trying to
make. That computing is more than just about devices and
horsepower, and supercomputers, and this particular algorithm
was what I think the tipping point when biology and computer
science came together. Since then, there have been many, many
examples of different kinds of computational methods, different
kinds of computational models, different kinds of computational
languages, different kinds of computational approaches for
understanding biology. I have just listed a few. A lot of this is just
buzzwords, if you will.

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Introduction to computational thinking

Model checking
Transcript
I want to be slightly a little more technical in this part of my talk
that’s not the shotgun algorithm, so I am going to go through one
example that is not the shotgun algorithm to show a different kind
of computational model and thinking that has influenced biology,
and this is very recent work. So to do that you have to bear with
me for a few slides because I am going to go into a slightly more
technical part of my talk and I going to do a primer on this
particular computational method, and its called model checking. I
always in my talk at this point ask the audience … how many
people have heard of model checking? I am surprised. After this
slide you will all know what model checking is, at least in the
abstract. OK, so let me go through it. There is a black box, it’s
called the ‘model checker’ and it has two inputs. One is a finite
state machine – what that means is that there are states and those
are circles and there are transitions between the states, those are
the state transitions, the lines, the arrows. And, what makes this a
finite state machine is that there are a finite number of circles, finite
number of states. OK, so that is one input and that is critical for
this technique that it be finite. The second input is a property that
we would normally write in English but, because computers can’t

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understand English well enough yet we write it in a more formal

language. I picked this particular logic, its called Temporal Logic, it
doesn’t matter, it is a formal language, a mathematical language
that can reason about the ordering of events. So basically you
have these two inputs, and what happens is, you describe the
system of interest using this input and you describe a desirable
property using this input. So you might want to say something like
… when you go to the ATM machine, eventually I get my money
out. So you would say … describe the ATM machine in terms of
the finite state machine and all the kinds of things you could with it.
Like; put your card in, punch buttons, deposit money, withdraw
money and you would describe the property of ‘eventually getting
my money out’ in terms of here and ideally for any ATM machine
you would like to know that this property holds. OK ideally. That’s
how we like to design our systems. Of course we know in reality
there are always bugs. OK so those are the two inputs. The output
is ‘yes’, every single ATM is designed, will always give your money
back but, more realistically you will say ‘no’, here is a bug in this
ATM machine, not only is there a bug but here is an example of a
sequence of steps that you will take in terms of that machine
where you are not going to get your money back. OK and that is
called the Counter Example. So that is my primer on model
checking. Basically it has two inputs, you press the button and out
will say, yes, every single time you interact with the ATM machine

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this property will hold or, no, you will get into trouble if you do this
sequence of events. OK? That is a particular computation model,
computational concept, computational approach and it has been
used in fact very successfully for hardware design, companies like
Intel, HP, Fujitsu, IBM, they all use this kind of technique for
verifying and debugging hardware/processor design. This is almost
a ‘bread and butter’ kind of technique in computing. Let me … I’m
going to skip that … for those of you who are interested in the
formal definitions that is what it looks like. OK there are many
efficient algorithms and many efficient data structures that allow us
to push a button and get that black box answer. What does that
have to do with biology? Well for the face of it absolutely nothing! It
certainly wasn’t invented because there was a biological problem
to solve. But it turns out that when you put computer scientists and
biologists together or when you have a person trained in both
biology and computer sciences sparks will fly and that is exactly
what happened to that particular person who worked in this
intersection of computer science and biology, particular model
checking and protein folding and he represents a protein that has
three residues in this particular case in terms of this very simplistic
finite state machine where you could imagine where this state with
three zeros (000) represents the folded state and this state with
the three ones (111) represents the unfolded state and these
numbers in parenthesis represent how much energy does it take to

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go from this state to this state, where you are unfolding one of the
residues. OK, and so the question is what are all the paths, the
ways in which this protein can unfold itself and what are the paths
in which the protein can unfold itself using the least amount of
energy. So now this is a very simple example, you can probably
figure this out in your head, right, but suppose you had 76
residues? You couldn’t even write that out on a piece of paper!
There is actually where the scale of computers come in handy
because they can do that sort of calculation, no problem. So in fact
they show that you can use this modelling checking technique to
explore state spaces as large as 2 to the 76th using this kind of
particular model-checking algorithm/model-checking approach,
and this technique, it’s a pretty recent result, you see its 2007, with
14 orders of magnitude greater than comparable techniques. So
this is already new stuff that we are talking about protein folding
and so on but here is where you can see sparks fly when you bring
computational methods to these kinds of biological problems. OK,
so I promise this is the most technical part of my presentation. So
that’s one discipline, many methods …

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Machine learning
Transcript
So let’s flip it. How about one method that has influenced many
disciplines? So I actually have to call on any computer scientists in
the audience to help me answer this one, because I doubt the
general public would know the answer. But I know there are some
computer scientists in the audience so I challenge you. What
method do you think has influenced so many disciplines today? –
conceptional modelling – Of course I have the answer I want you
to say. The answer is ‘machine learning’. How many people have
heard of ‘machine learning’? More people have heard about
‘machine learning’ than ‘model checking’ so that’s good. So
machine learning has completely transformed the whole field of
statistics. In fact there is a whole department of machine learning
at Carnegie Mellon, if you can believe that within the school of
Computer Science and it’s made of faculties from Computer
Science and Statistics and what they really do is Statistical
Machine Learning. Another example is that there are departments
of statistics now at universities for instance Purdue which has an
excellent Statistics department who are hiring computer scientists
because they see their future as in this combination of statistics
and computing particularly in Statisitical Machine Learning. So we

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are seeing this in the next generation if you will. So let me give you
some examples of where machine learning has influenced many,
many fields. So in the sciences it is a technique that has been
used to discover new brown dwarfs and fossil galaxies. This is
really new scientific discoveries because of this particular
technique. In medicine it has been used for discovering and
inventing these kinds of drugs and uses in these applications. In
meteorology: for tornado formation. In the neurosciences for
understanding the brain, so I should at least give you a one
sentence definition of Machine Learning given that many people
may not know it. What it is, it’s a technique that allows you to
analyse huge data sets, large amounts of data and find patterns
and clusters in large amounts of data. So in this particular case
what you feed this algorithm is lots and lots of fMRI scans, (scans
of your brain). What they are able to do through using Machine
Learning is to find out what part of your brain lights up when a
subject sees a noun versus a verb or this kind of adjective versus
that kind of adjective and it’s looking at lots and lots of fMRI scans
that allow you to see those clusters, those patterns. Machine
learning has been used beyond science and engineering, so for
instance it is used in detecting credit card fraud. It’s used on Wall
Street, (the answer from the back of the room). When you go to
the supermarket and you hand the clerk your Safeway card, your
affinity cards, they are tracking your purchases and the coupon

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you get out after your receipt, is using that kind of analysis of large
amounts of data. Recommendation Systems and Reputation
Systems like Netflix when you go to Travelocity to find out what
customers use and so on. Machine learning is even used in sports,
so I don’t know what basketball player this, is but maybe you do,
but what they did was videotape lots of professional basketball
players and then the coaches would use Machine Learning to find
out what are the skills of these professionals so they can teach
those skills to their own students. This is Lance Armstrong who
used Machine Learning to analyse the kind of data he kept of
himself. As you know, he is a machine – and he was quite
mathematical and analytical in his training so that he could really
hone his skills.

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Chemistry, physics, economics...

Transcript
In chemistry computational methods, computational concepts have
been used to actually invent new molecular structures that would
have desired chemical properties. In physics, (this is one of my
favourite examples), I am going to labour on this a little bit in
quantum computing. There is a very young professor in MIT who
works in quantum computing, he’s actually in the Computer
Science department but he works as a physicist. In computer
science, there is a kind of quantum computer where you can
represent the problem in terms of a, let’s call it a graph, but you
can solve the problem if you can morph this graph into some other
representation/other graph. You can solve it more easily in this
second representation, and so the idea is then how can you get
this graph to be morphed into this graph. There is a procedure that
you can use that would allow you to make manipulations of each
graph until you finally come in the middle, and have that
intermediate. Physicists know about this kind of quantum
computer. So, the question that quantum scientists asks, is how
fast you can do this? This is something that computer scientists
ask all the time, how fast can you do it, right? I already said that is
the question they always ask about efficiency in terms of space

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and time. The physicist never asks that question of themselves,

they just know that there exists some path such that you can do
that, but they didn’t ask, how fast can you do it? Now again, for the
computer scientists in the audience, the reason this was such a
tantalising question to answer, is, if it turns out that the
convergence is polynomial it means that you might have an
answer to the P=NP question. So you can see why this young
computer scientist at MIT would very much like to know the answer
to that convergence question, and it turns out that it goes really,
really, really fast until this very small window where it is
exponential. Even so it was a very interesting question to pose and
now he tells me that the physicists are going around asking how
fast on all their convergence questions. This to me is a deep way
of computational thinking influencing other people’s thinking
because you ask these basic questions that we would ask, and
had the answer being polynomial then wow!, what a break through
in computer science. We see it in Mathematics, we see it in
Engineering and I think we are going to see more of it in all other
fields. In society like Economics, right now, in fact tomorrow and
Friday there is a workshop at Cornell on computer science and
economics that an assessor is helping to sponsor and we are
seeing a lot of the theories of economics and models of
economics. In fact, we already know that some of them are not
applying to our real world, but they are certainly not necessarily

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applicable to say to the internet and internet economics, and so

there is all of a sudden this new interest, completely new interest,
in revisiting economic models and theories in terms of computing
models and vice versa. So for instance we are very much using
game theoretic models in looking at lots of problems in computer
science, game theory from economics, but many of the direct
relationships between economics and computer science has to do
with things like added placement and keyword auctions and so on.
So for instance when you type into Google and you do a search,
maybe you realise to the right of your search you have all these
ads, well companies actually bid on where they want their
company to be listed in that list of ads. You pay a lot to be listed
number 1. But maybe it doesn’t matter to be listed number 1 or 2,
you pay a little less to be listed number 2, you are still number 2,
you are up there, right so that the kind of game theoretic thinking
that people are doing in computer science. In Law we are seeing
computational thinking and in the Humanities. Again in the sense
of digging into the data challenge is analysing lots and lots of data.

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