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cmt119-assessment

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/*styling for the navigation bar*/
.nav-bar {
background-color: #000000;
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.title {
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="..\css\style.css">
<title>Donald Knuth</title>
</head>
<body>
<nav>
<ul class="nav-bar">
<li><a href="index-home.html">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="index-biography.html">Biography</a></li>
<li><a href="index-reflection.html">Personal Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="index-references.html">References</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<header>
<h1 class="title">Donald Knuth's Biography</h1>
</header>
<main>
<figure>
<img id="donald" src="../images/knuth.jpg" alt="A picture of Donald Knuth"></img>
</figure>
<header>
<h2>Donald Knuth</h2>
</header>
<article>
<p>I’ll be focusing on Donald Knuth in this biography, if for no other reason than finding him very charming
on a podcast once (Fridman 2019). That’s not to imply his contributions aren’t worthy enough to warrant choosing him however,
as Knuth is widely known for writing one of the most comprehensive and seminal compendiums in computer science,
<i>The Art of Computer Programming</i>, among other things.</p>
<p>Knuth is a retired American professor, currently 84 years old, a church organist and father, with a bachelors,
masters and doctorate in mathematics (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009). In spite of this, his most notable contributions, culminating in receiving
the illustrious Turing Award (Walden 2019), have been in computer science. He manged to cross this admittedly small gap from
mathematics to computer science after being introduced to the IBM 650 – a really early consumer computer – while
studying for his bachelor's degree, deciding that he could write the assembly and compiler code better than IBM.</p>
<p>Not only did he manage it, but also went on to spend his summers writing compilers for major companies, gaining
such a reputation that he was commissioned to write a book about them (Knuth 1997); one book quickly became several. In these
books, currently five with plans for more, Knuth perspicaciously attempts to present all that there is to know about
programming and algorithms, covering theory, applicability and problem solving. It’s this that received the previously
mentioned Turing Award, as the content was and still is considered to be widely brilliant and informative. So technical
are its contents that Bill Gates has since claimed you should “send [him] a resume” if you’re able to understand it (Weinberger 2017), and
Knuth described it as “the most important project of [his] life” (Knuth 1999). </p>
<p>To accompany these books, he created the TeX computational typesetting system, which presents mathematical and computational
formulae in a uniform and sophisticated fashion that simply didn’t exist at the time he created it (Schechter 2005). Meaning, aspiring computer
scientists and mathematicians now had the ability to present much higher-quality written work. Furthermore, due to Knuth’s
personal disdain for patents (Knuth and Wayback Machine 2015), it was created open-source allowing people to access and develop on it freely, leading to the
now popular LaTeX (an updated version of TeX), that’s still dominant today, 44 years later.</p>
<p>By making high-quality written work more accessible, and creating a detailed, curriculum-guiding explanation of its most
complex concepts, Knuth has pushed computer science forwards and cemented himself a place in its history.</p>
</article>
<footer>
<br>
<p>Full reference list <a href="index-references.html">here</a></p>
</footer>
</main>
</body>
</html>
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="..\css\style.css">
<title>Computational Thinking</title>
</head>
<body>
<nav>
<ul class="nav-bar">
<li><a href="index-home.html">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="index-biography.html">Biography</a></li>
<li><a href="index-reflection.html">Personal Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="index-references.html">References</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<header>
<h1 class="title">What is Computational Thinking?</h1>
</header>
<main>
<header>
<h2>What is Computational Thinking?</h2>
</header>
<figure>
<img id="figure-1" src="../images/algorithm.jpeg" alt="A flowchart for creating a website biography."></img>
</figure>
<article>
<p>Computational thinking is, pretty simply, an advanced mental tool that we can use to assess and solve problems.
We can take almost any problem - from organising a bachelor party, to specific computational problems. While useful
in both circumstances, it’s going to be infinitely more valuable to me in terms of my Computing course, so it’ll be
best to pull an illustrative example from there. </p>
<p>Imagine I’ve been tasked to create a website that provides a brief biography of an influential politician. I can’t
just create one on the spot, because there’s things I need to work out first. Such as: who am I going to pick? how
should it be formatted? how do you even make a website? etc. By taking a step back to <b>decompose</b> the project into smaller
pieces I’m making the overall project more manageable – at least I’m giving the way I approach it some structure.
</p>
<p>Once you’ve got your smaller problems, it’s worth checking to see if you’ve encountered any of them already.
I’ve made plenty of websites before, and written biographies before, so there is very likely going to be some similarities
when making this one. For example, in terms of formatting the website, I know that I’ve previously had problems with image
alignment, so I could look at how I’ve previously solved that and apply a similar fix. This process is <b>pattern recognition</b>. </p>
<p>Once you’ve got your problems, and you know which ones you’ve solved before, you can start to make sure that you focus on
the ones important to your project so that you aren’t wasting time. Consequently, the next step is <b>abstracting</b> all the strictly
relevant problems to focus on, to make sure that your head doesn’t explode trying to focus on a hundred unimportant things.
I’ve never had to worry about the font for example, so I can ignore that problem. </p>
<p>This brings us on to the very last step in computational thinking, formulating a reliable step-by-step solution to all of these problems.
There’s a bunch of ways to structure this <b>algorithm</b>, pseudocode and algorithms are common. A rough algorithm for creating the biography
might look something like <i>Figure 1</i>. It’s worth noting that ensuring repeatability by evaluating your algorithm is arguably one of the most
important parts of computational thinking, as it's indicative of a successful use of the process.</p>
<header>
<h2>How important is computational thinking?</h2>
</header>
<p>The importance of computational thinking to a career and academic course are very similar, as much benefit of computational thinking is
directly linked to improving your critical thinking skills. Knowing how to approach a problem is just as important as knowing how to solve it,
something that employers and students alike can sympathise with strongly. This is only exaggerated when you consider the specific applicability
to computational careers and studies, as you’re able to break projects into simple instructions that could be translated directly to a computer.</p>
<p>In terms of explicit applications of computational thinking to my course, I have a specific assignment in my software engineering module that
requires me to look at a problem, and then create a solution and business plan in response to it. In this case, problem decomposition will be
incredibly important at several stages, as building a business plan relies almost entirely on the ability to discriminate problems/ solutions/ target
audiences etc. in order to create a competent and modular plan. Furthermore, remembering pattern recognition and abstraction techniques will be perfect
when considering comparative companies and solutions – the business plan itself being a literal step-by-step plan to solve a problem.</p>
</article>
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="..\css\style.css">
<title>References</title>
</head>
<body>
<nav>
<ul class="nav-bar">
<li><a href="index-home.html">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="index-biography.html">Biography</a></li>
<li><a href="index-reflection.html">Personal Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="index-references.html">References</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<header>
<h1 class="title">References</h1>
</header>
<main>
<header>
<h2>Biography References</h2>
</header>
<section>
<ol id="bibliography">
<li>Fridman, L. 2019. Donald Knuth: Algorithms, Complexity, and The Art of Computer Programming | Lex Fridman Podcast #62. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdBfsXbST8 [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<br>
<li>Knuth, D. 1997. The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 1. Addison-Wesley.</li>
<br>
<li>Knuth, D. 1999. Knuth: Retirement. Available at: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/retd.html [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<br>
<li>Knuth, D. and Wayback Machine 2015. Wayback Machine. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20150924040943/http:/www.groklaw.net/images/G308Knuth.pdf [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<br>
<li>Schechter, E. 2005. Introduction to TeX. Available at: https://math.vanderbilt.edu/schectex/wincd/intro_to_tex.htm [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<br>
<li>The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009. Donald Knuth | Biography & Facts | Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Knuth [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<br>
<li>Walden, D. 2019. Donald E. Knuth - A.M. Turing Award Laureate. Available at: https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/knuth_1013846.cfm [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<br>
<li>Weinberger, M. 2017. Bill Gates Once Said “definitely send me a resume” If You Finish This Fiendishly Difficult Book. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.in/bill-gates-once-said-definitely-send-me-a-resume-if-you-finish-this-fiendishly-difficult-book/articleshow/58795297.cms [Accessed: 26 April 2022].</li>
</ol>
</section>
<header>
<h2>Images Used</h2>
</header>
<section>
<ol id="bibliography">
<li>Hélardot, C. and Unsplash 2018. JavaScript in progress. Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/95YRwf6CNw8 [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<p>Permission for use with the Unsplash License</p>
<li>Appelbaum, J. 2005. KnuthAtOpenContentAlliance.jpg. Available at: https://sco.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KnuthAtOpenContentAlliance.jpg [Accessed: 2 November 2022].</li>
<p>Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license.</p>
</ol>
</section>
</main>
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="..\css\style.css">
<title>Personal Reflection</title>
</head>
<body>
<nav>
<ul class="nav-bar">
<li><a href="index-home.html">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="index-biography.html">Biography</a></li>
<li><a href="index-reflection.html">Personal Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="index-references.html">References</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<header>
<h1 class="title">Computational Thinking - A Reflection</h1>
</header>
<main>
<header>
<h2>A Reflection on What I've Learned</h2>
</header>
<article>
<p>Throughout my module, there’s been many valuable and insightful skills that I’ve learned and internalised - not
just in terms of computational thinking. After all, many more topics have been considered, from HTML/CSS to providing
a background to programming. Each one is worthy of its own discussion, and has contributed something unique to the
learning.</p>
<p>Of course, coding and engagement with computational ideas is going to be at the core of the rest of my module, so learning
how to engage with these things is going to be just as important as the actual engagement with the subject itself, owing
to the wide range of languages and ideas that are going to be looked at. Consequently, engaging with computational thinking
in general was incredibly important in terms of the rest of my learning outcomes.</p>
<p>My first opportunity to put this into practice was in exploring HTML and CSS. I’d never made a website before, or even engaged
much with coding, and it showed. On the first website I made for example, I had no idea how to work CSS, had hot-linked every
image, used no semantic HTML and I’d spent most of my time simply trying to get it to work – it was a mess. An important mess,
too, as learning how to engage with these new concepts would be indicative of my engagement with later languages like Python.
To this end, learning about specific web and research tools – like MDN and Stack Overflow – has made independent learning in
this regard much easier, and will no doubt be relied upon when I approach future problems. </p>
<p>Outside of the obvious utility in using HTML/CSS to create websites, the most impactful aspect of this topic personally, similar
to that of computational thinking, was training myself mentally to engage with a separate English language that has its own set
of rules and customs. This was really crucial to the engagement with the introduction of programming later introduced in the module.</p>
<p>Another topic, data representation and number systems, followed on in the trend of the previous two topics by having much of their
utility deriving from their relevance as a foundation for future learning. Here, I learned the way a computer interprets data internally,
specifically in relation to numbers, which helped explain certain behaviours and errors that a computer might run in to.</p>
<p>While the first half of the module taught me how to approach computational ideas, the latter half gave me much more hands-on experience
that directly translated to other modules in my course – specifically in CMT120. After already having looked at things such as iteration
and branching generally it became much easier to apply these concepts to direct languages like Python and JavaScript. Rather than starting
from scratch, I had the background required to focus instead on the correct way of phrasing these concepts within the language. Loops in
particular had been looked at plenty within Computational Thinking, and have been used constantly within JavaScript and Python
tasks to varying degrees.</p>
</article>
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