# Presentation: 943736

## Computational Thinking for Everyone

**Jeannette M. Wing**
- President’s Professor of Computer ScienceCarnegie Mellon UniversityandAssistant DirectorComputer and Information Science and Engineering DirectorateNational Science Foundation

-  2008 Jeannette M. Wing

## Outline

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Computational Thinking
- A Vision for our Field
- The Two A’s to CT
- Research and Education Implications
- Two and a Half Years Later...
- External Response and Impact
- Reality Check

## My Grand Vision for the Field

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world by the middle of the 21st Century.
- Just like reading, writing, and arithmetic.
- Imagine every child knowing how to think like a computer scientist!
- Incestuous: Computing and computers will enable the spread of computational thinking.
- In research: scientists, engineers, ..., historians, artists
- In education: K-12 students and teachers, undergrads, ...

- J.M. Wing, “Computational Thinking,” *CACM* Viewpoint, March 2006, pp. 33-35._[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wing](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wing)_/

**Notes:**
Thinking computationally not programming
Fundamental skill not rote skill
Computing not computers: pervasive computing/computers is passe: 20th Century!
“used by” ambitious.  Certainly needed to function in modern society
In research: long-term; in education: nearer-term (outreach, diversity, changing society’s view of our field)

## Examples of Computational Thinking

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- Jeannette M. Wing

- How difficult is this problem and how best can I solve it?
- Theoretical computer science gives precise meaning to these and related questions and their answers.
- C.T. is thinking recursively.
- C.T. is reformulating a seemingly difficult problem into one which we know how to solve.
- Reduction, embedding, transformation, simulation
- C.T. is choosing an appropriate representation or modeling the relevant aspects of a problem to make it tractable.
- C.T. is interpreting code as data and data as code.
- C.T. is using abstraction and decomposition in tackling a large complex task.
- C.T. is judging a system’s design for its simplicity and elegance.
- C.T. is type checking, as a generalization of dimensional analysis.
- C.T. is prevention, detection, and recovery from worst-case scenarios through redundancy, damage containment, and error correction.
- C.T. is modularizing something in anticipation of multiple users and prefetching and caching in anticipation of future use.
- C.T. is calling gridlock deadlock and avoiding race conditions when synchronizing meetings.
- C.T. is using the difficulty of solving hard AI problems to foil computing agents.
- C.T. is taking an approach to solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science.

- Please tell me your favorite examples of computational thinking!

## The First A to Computational Thinking

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Abstractions are our “mental” tools
- The abstraction process includes
- Choosing the right abstractions
- Operating simultaneously at multiple layers of abstraction
- Defining the relationships the between layers

## The Second A to Computational Thinking

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- The Second A to Computational Thinking

- The power of our “mental” tools is amplified by our “metal” tools.
- Automation is mechanizing our abstractions, abstraction layers, and their relationships
- Mechanization is possible due to precise and exacting notations and models
- There is some “computer” below (human or machine, virtual or physical)

## Two A’s to C.T. Combined  

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Two A’s to C.T. Combined

- Computing is the automation of our abstractions
- They give us the audacity and ability to scale.
- Computational thinking
- choosing the right abstractions, etc.
- choosing the right “computer” for the task

## 

Research Implications

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Research Implications

## CT in Other Sciences, Math, and Engineering

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## CT in Other Sciences, Math, and Engineering

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## CT in Other Sciences, Math, and Engineering

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## CT for Society

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## CT for Society

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

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## CT for Society

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## 

Educational Implications

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Educational Implications

## Pre-K to Grey

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- K-6, 7-9, 10-12
- Undergraduate courses
- Freshmen year
- “Ways to Think Like a Computer Scientist” aka Principles of Computing
- Upper-level courses
- Graduate-level courses
- Computational arts and sciences
- E.g., entertainment technology, computational linguistics, ..., computational finance, ..., computational biology, computational astrophysics
- Post-graduate
- Executive and continuing education, senior citizens
- Teachers, not just students

## Question and Challenge to Community

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- What are effective ways of learning (teaching)computational thinking by (to) children?
-     - What concepts can students best learn when? What should we teach when?       What is our analogy to numbers in K, algebra in 7, and calculus in 12?
-     - We uniquely also should ask how best to integrate The Computer       with learning and teaching the concepts.

## Simple Daily Examples

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Looking up a name in an alphabetically sorted list
- Linear: start at the top
- Binary search: start in the middle
- Standing in line at a bank, supermarket, customs & immigration
- Performance analysis of task scheduling
- Putting things in your child’s knapsack for the day
- Pre-fetching and caching
- Taking your kids to soccer, gymnastics, and swim practice
- Traveling salesman (with more constraints)
- Cooking a gourmet meal
- Parallel processing: You don’t want the meat to get cold while you’re cooking the vegetables.
- Cleaning out your garage
- Keeping only what you need vs. throwing out stuff when you run out of space.
- Storing away your child’s Lego pieces scattered on the LR floor
- Using hashing (e.g., by shape, by color)
- Doing laundry, getting food at a buffet
- Pipelining the wash, dry, and iron stages; plates, salad, entrée, dessert stations
- Even in grade school, we learn algorithms (long division, factoring, GCD, ...) and abstract data types (sets, tables, ...).

**Notes:**
The Central-Queue policy is provably optimal when job size variability is
low.   WFM (in NY) goes with the bank-line scheme because (maybe) there is less variability in job size because prices are so high, people buy less.  Still should have an express lane for < 8 items or less.

## 

External Community Response

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- Jeannette M. Wing

- External Community Response

## External Community ...

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Outside of CMU
- Outside of Computer Science
- Outside of Science and Engineering
- Outside of US
- Impact on research and education through NSF

## 

Research Impact

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Research Impact

## “Computational Thinking,” Andrew Hebert (Director, MSR/Cambridge), p. 20, 2006.

- “Computational Thinking,” Andrew Hebert (Director, MSR/Cambridge), p. 20, 2006.

## Volume 440 Number 7083 pp 383-580,

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- March 23, 2006

## CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## Spearheaded by Alan Bundy

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## Also, report by Conrad Taylor on my talk at

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Grand Challenges in Computing Conference,British Computer Society, London, March 2008

## 

Reach Through NSF

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Reach Through NSF

## CDI: Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Paradigm shift
- Not just our metal tools (transistors and wires) but also our mental tools (abstractions and methods)
- It’s about partnerships and transformative research.
- To innovate in/innovatively use *computational thinking*; and
- To advance more than one science/engineering discipline.
- Fortuitous timing for me ...

- Computational Thinking for Science and Engineering

**Notes:**

~650 Data to Knowledge, 500 Understanding Complexity, < 200 Virtual Organizations

90 PDs (~35 from CISE) and 6 (4 from CISE) admin staff across the agency helped

## CDI Response

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- 1800 Letters of Intent, 1300 Preliminary Proposals, 200 Final Proposals, 36 Awards
- FY08: ~$50M invested by all directorates and offices

## Range of Disciplines in CDI Awards

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Aerospace engineering
- Atmospheric sciences
- Biochemistry
- Biophysics
- Chemical engineering
- Communications science and engineering
- Computer science
- Geosciences
- Linguistics
- Materials engineering
- Mathematics
- Mechanical engineering
- Molecular biology
- Nanocomputing
- Neuroscience
- Robotics
- Social sciences
- Statistical physics

- ... advances via Computational Thinking

## Range of Societal Issues Addressed

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Cancer therapy
- Climate change
- Environment
- Visually impaired
- Water

## 

Educational Impact

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Educational Impact

## Colleges and Universities are Revisiting Curricula

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Carnegie Mellon: Tom Cortina’s 15-105
- MIT: John Guttag’s 6.00 (for freshmen)
- Georgia Tech:
- UG: “Threads”, Mark Guzdial, “Learning Computing with Robots,” Tucker Balch and Deepak Kumar (Bryn Mawr)
- Grad: Alexander Gray and Nick Feamster
- Columbia: Al Aho
- Princeton: PICASso, for non-CS graduate students
- ...
- Villanova, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Georgetown, ...
- U Wisconsin-La Crosse, ...

## CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

## © 2008 Microsoft Corporation

- Jeannette M. Wing

- © 2008 Microsoft Corporation

## 

Reach Through NSF

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Reach Through NSF

## CISE

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- CPATH
- Revisiting undergrad curricula
- Enlarge scope to include outreach to K-12
- Broadening Participation in Computing
- Women, underrepresented minorities, people with disabilities
- Alliances and demo projects

## CPATH Awards Specific to CT

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Brown
- De Paul
- Georgia State
- North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
- Middle Tennessee State University
- Penn State University
- Towson University
- University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- University of Nebraska
- University of Texas, El Paso
- Utah State
- Villanova
- Virginia Tech
- Washington State

## Broadening Participation

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- AP Revision
- Academic Advisory group includes NSF, ACM, CSTA, university reps (e.g., Cortina), and high school teachers
- New Image for Computing
- Working with Image of Computing and WGBH (Boston)
- Alliances
- e.g., ARTSI (HBCU/R1 Robotics, Touretzky, et al.)

## Beyond CISE

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Challenge to Community: What is an effective way of teaching (learning) computational thinking to (by) K-12?
- Computational Thinking for Children
- National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB): Workshops on CT for Everyone.  *Collaborating with Board on Science Education.*
- Cyber-enabled Learning
- Education and Human Resources (EHR) Directorate, Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI), Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), and CISE

## Other Educational and Outreach Activities

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Peter Denning’s “Rebooting Computing Summit”, Jan 2009
- Andy van Dam is CRA-E “Education Czar”
- ACM Ed Council
- CS4HS: Lenore Blum’s vision: “CS4HS in every state!”
- Women@SCS Roadshow
- Image of Computing Task Force: Jill Ross, Rick Rashid, Jim Foley

## Two Messages for the General Public

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Intellectually challenging and engaging scientific problems in computer science remain to be understood and solved.
- Limited only by our curiosity and creativity
- One can major in computer science and do anything.
- Just like English, political science, or mathematics

## Spread the Word!

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Help make computational thinking commonplace!

- To fellow faculty, students, researchers, administrators, teachers, parents, principals, guidance counselors, school boards, teachers’ unions,congressmen, policy makers, ...

**Notes:**
Thinking computationally not programming
Fundamental skill not rote skill
Computing not computers: pervasive computing/computers is passe: 20th Century!
“used by” ambitious.  Certainly needed to function in modern society
In research: long-term; in education: nearer-term (outreach, diversity, changing society’s view of our field)

## Two and a Half Years Later: Research

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Two and a Half Years Later: Research

- Computational     Thinking

## Research Challenges and Opportunities

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Research Challenges and Opportunities

- CT for other sciences and engineering and beyond
- It’s inevitable
- They need us, they want us
- It’s about abstractions and symbolic “calculations” not just number-crunching

## Two and a Half Years Later: Education

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Two and a Half Years Later: Education

- Computational     Thinking

## Educational Challenges and Opportunities

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Educational Challenges and Opportunities

- Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education continues to be a huge challenge
- ~15,000 school districts in the US
- HS science and math teachers
- Public perception of STEM disciplines

## Bigger Picture: Societal and Political Issues

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Climate Change
- Energy
- Environment
- Economics
- Human Behavior
- Sustainability
- Healthcare
- National security
- ...

- Competitiveness, Innovation, Leadership

## Broad Charge To You

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Help the community define a strategy for determining what, if anything, of computational thinking makes sense to teach at the K-12 level.
- where
- community = computer scientists, educators, learning/cognitive scientists
- what, if anything, of computational thinking = concepts/principles/skills underlying computing
- K-12 = especially early grades

## Questions

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- What are the fundamental concepts of CT?  Elemental?
- What would be an effective ordering of these concepts?
- How best should we integrate The Computer with teaching the concepts?

## Long-term view

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Analogy
- What physics did for itself decades ago.
- What math did and continues to do periodically.
- It’s NOT just curriculum design.
- How do children learn what when?

## Short-term agenda (suggestion)

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- Workshop 1
- Identify concepts/principles/skills
- Community input
- Workshop 2
- Propose one or more models of “sequencing” the concepts
- Propose a strategy for incorporating it in an early grade or K-12 curriculm.
- Next steps?

- In parallel, work with or track other efforts and organizations.

## Thanks for Helping to Spread the Word!

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

- _Thanks for_ Helping to Spread the Word!

- Make computational thinking commonplace!

- To fellow faculty, students, researchers, administrators, teachers, parents, principals, guidance counselors, school boards, teachers’ unions,congressmen, policy makers, ...

**Notes:**
Thinking computationally not programming
Fundamental skill not rote skill
Computing not computers: pervasive computing/computers is passe: 20th Century!
“used by” ambitious.  Certainly needed to function in modern society
In research: long-term; in education: nearer-term (outreach, diversity, changing society’s view of our field)

## Thank you!

## Credits

- CT for Everyone

- Jeannette M. Wing

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