Computational Thinking II

 In the second installment of the computational thinking project, we learned about binary coding. By using a special alphabet, we translated our favorite color using a different alphabet focusing on a base 8 set of open/close sets. The combinations were substituted with 1's and 0's as a way to connect computer language. 

My favorite color is blue, and here is the binary coding with the special alphabet: 10111101 10110011 10101010 10111010

Students had a collaborative assignment having to do with data entry. At the time I pulled information, 13 students had reported information to the document. Here is some data:

  • As of Sunday, 5/3/21, only 13 students populated the collaborative sheet so the data I am reporting on will differ from peers. There are currently 3/13 students who selected blue (23%).
  • None of the students selected colors starting with the letter T. The same goes with students selecting school spirit colors.
  • The top three colors include blue (3/13 students accounting for 23%), green (3/13 students accounting for 23%), and a tie between red and pink (both with 2/13 students accounting for 15% each). If you think of pink as a variation of red, then that group accounts for 4/13 votes (30%).
The last segment of the assignment focused on strands of instructions written out to execute a specific group of operations. As expected, writing out the steps needed to do a complex set of tasks was laborious and difficult to organize. When replicating those steps with symbols, the level of complexity and time needed to complete the task changed drastically. Thus, this shows the connection of how algorithmic operations are quicker and easier to execute. It makes sense that computers are so fast.

Here's a screen capture of the algorithm that I created to fill in a picture:


All things considered, this was an enjoyable and thought provoking assignment. I can see the value of including this in conjunction with web page coding and web site development.


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