Computer literacy in secondary education: The performance and engagement of girls

This research study examines performance and engagement in computer literacy of boys and girls (N = 873). Performance and engagement in computer literacy are established with CAST. Computer Alfabetisme Schalen Twente, a Dutch version of the Minnesota Computer Literacy Awareness Assessment. The results of the study show that girls perform lower and are less engaged in computer literacy than boys. Research on sex differences in mathematics and science education shows that three factors are important for the design of action programs for girls, viz. the expectation and behaviour of significant others, the perception of the usefulness of the subject for a future career and a positive attitude towards the subject. This study shows that these factors seem to be relevant for computer literacy too. It has been found that a positive attitude towards mathematics and physics is positively related to a positive attitude towards computer literacy. An examination of the relation between performance in computer literacy and attitude towards mathematics and physics shows no differences in performance between boys and girls with a negative attitude towards mathematics and physics. For boys and girls with a positive attitude towards mathematics and physics however a difference in performance in computer literacy has been found in favour of boy

Insights in how computer science can be a science

Recently, information retrieval is shown to be a science by mapping information retrieval scientific study to scientific study abstracted from physics. The exercise was rather tedious and lengthy. Instead of dealing with the nitty gritty, this paper looks at the insights into how computer science can be made into a science by using that methodology. That is by mapping computer science scientific study to the scientific study abstracted from physics. To show the mapping between computer science and physics, we need to define what is engineering science which computer science belongs to. Some principles and assumptions of engineering science theory are presented. To show computer science is a science, we presented two approaches. Approach 1 considers computer science as simulation of human behaviour similar to the goal of artificial intelligence. Approach 2 is closely related to the actual (scientific) activities in computer science, and this approach considers computer science based on the theory of computation. Finally, we answer some of the common outstanding issues about computer science to convince our reader that computer science is a science

Internal networks revisited: Telepathy meets technology

This conference paper is available to download from the publisher’s website at the link below.This is speculative paper that explores the paradigm-shifting concept of initiating a mind/body to computer communication or interaction, it is not intended necessarily a prescriptive work. This idea pushes the boundaries of accepted conventional science, in terms of human versus computer capabilities and the potential for these capabilities to work in tandem, through means currently accepted only in science fiction. This paper takes the recent revelations in physics, psychology and neuroscience then couples them with the idea of human computer interaction and wireless communication to envision experiential means of connecting human consciousness with technology

Towards "dynamic domains": totally continuous cocomplete Q-categories

It is common practice in both theoretical computer science and theoretical physics to describe the (static) logic of a system by means of a complete lattice. When formalizing the dynamics of such a system, the updates of that system organize themselves quite naturally in a quantale, or more generally, a quantaloid. In fact, we are lead to consider cocomplete quantaloid-enriched categories as fundamental mathematical structure for a dynamic logic common to both computer science and physics. Here we explain the theory of totally continuous cocomplete categories as generalization of the well-known theory of totally continuous suplattices. That is to say, we undertake some first steps towards a theory of "dynamic domains''.Comment: 29 pages; contains a more elaborate introduction, corrects some typos, and has a sexier title than the previously posted version, but the mathematics are essentially the sam

Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity

Constraint satisfaction problems are a central pillar of modern computational complexity theory. This survey provides an introduction to the rapidly growing field of Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity, which includes the study of quantum constraint satisfaction problems. Over the past decade and a half, this field has witnessed fundamental breakthroughs, ranging from the establishment of a "Quantum Cook-Levin Theorem" to deep insights into the structure of 1D low-temperature quantum systems via so-called area laws. Our aim here is to provide a computer science-oriented introduction to the subject in order to help bridge the language barrier between computer scientists and physicists in the field. As such, we include the following in this survey: (1) The motivations and history of the field, (2) a glossary of condensed matter physics terms explained in computer-science friendly language, (3) overviews of central ideas from condensed matter physics, such as indistinguishable particles, mean field theory, tensor networks, and area laws, and (4) brief expositions of selected computer science-based results in the area. For example, as part of the latter, we provide a novel information theoretic presentation of Bravyi's polynomial time algorithm for Quantum 2-SAT.Comment: v4: published version, 127 pages, introduction expanded to include brief introduction to quantum information, brief list of some recent developments added, minor changes throughou