Proceedings of the Second Program Visualization Workshop, 2002

The Program Visualization Workshops aim to bring together researchers who design and construct program visualizations and, above all, educators who use and evaluate visualizations in their teaching. The first workshop took place in July 2000 at Porvoo, Finland. The second workshop was held in cooperation with ACM SIGCSE and took place at HornstrupCentret, Denmark in June 2002, immediately following the ITiCSE 2002 Conference in Aarhus, Denmark

Mathematical Surprises

This is open access book provides plenty of pleasant mathematical surprises. There are many fascinating results that do not appear in textbooks although they are accessible with a good knowledge of secondary-school mathematics. This book presents a selection of these topics including the mathematical formalization of origami, construction with straightedge and compass (and other instruments), the five- and six-color theorems, a taste of Ramsey theory and little-known theorems proved by induction. Among the most surprising theorems are the Mohr-Mascheroni theorem that a compass alone can perform all the classical constructions with straightedge and compass, and Steiner's theorem that a straightedge alone is sufficient provided that a single circle is given. The highlight of the book is a detailed presentation of Gauss's purely algebraic proof that a regular heptadecagon (a regular polygon with seventeen sides) can be constructed with straightedge and compass. Although the mathematics used in the book is elementary (Euclidean and analytic geometry, algebra, trigonometry), students in secondary schools and colleges, teachers, and other interested readers will relish the opportunity to confront the challenge of understanding these surprising theorems

Mathematical Surprises

This is open access book provides plenty of pleasant mathematical surprises. There are many fascinating results that do not appear in textbooks although they are accessible with a good knowledge of secondary-school mathematics. This book presents a selection of these topics including the mathematical formalization of origami, construction with straightedge and compass (and other instruments), the five- and six-color theorems, a taste of Ramsey theory and little-known theorems proved by induction. Among the most surprising theorems are the Mohr-Mascheroni theorem that a compass alone can perform all the classical constructions with straightedge and compass, and Steiner's theorem that a straightedge alone is sufficient provided that a single circle is given. The highlight of the book is a detailed presentation of Gauss's purely algebraic proof that a regular heptadecagon (a regular polygon with seventeen sides) can be constructed with straightedge and compass. Although the mathematics used in the book is elementary (Euclidean and analytic geometry, algebra, trigonometry), students in secondary schools and colleges, teachers, and other interested readers will relish the opportunity to confront the challenge of understanding these surprising theorems

ConcurrencySuite: Teaching concurrency and nondeterminism with Spin

The Spin model checker is an excellent system for teaching concepts such as concurrency, verification and nondeterminism. I will show pedagogical tools that I have built based upon Spin: the jSpin environment for developing and verifying concurrent programs; SpinSpider, a tool for generating graphical representations of state diagrams of concurrent programs; VN, a tool for “experiencing” the nondeterminism of finite automata

Comments on “tautology testing with a generalized matrix reduction method”

AbstractBibel [1] has given a proof system for the propositional calculus called (generalized) matrix reduction. When matrix splitting is restricted to one literal at a time the system is the same as Galil's system [2] of enumeration dags. In fact the relation is even closer. The matrices produced by the reduction on a set of literals {I} are exactly the set of clauses appearing on a dag after |I| consecutive branches with substitute for the same literals. The clauses M1 (which do not appear in the matrices Mc) are exactly the clauses whose branches close with the empty clause Λ. Thus the saving in space is at most by a factor of |I|, but |I| is bounded from above by log2 M to ‘guarantee polynomial behaviour’. Hence Galil's system polynomially simulates matrix reduction and thus matrix reduction is also an exponential proof procedure

Using Semantic Waves to Analyse the Effectiveness of Unplugged Computing Activities

We apply the notion of ‘semantic waves’ from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), a powerful educational framework, to Computer Science Education. We consider two case studies exploring how a simple analysis can help improve learning activities. The case studies focus on unplugged activities used in the context of both teaching school students and teacher continuing professional development. We used a simple method based on LCT to analyse the activities in terms of their ‘semantic profiles’: changes in the context-dependence and complexity of the knowledge being taught.This led to improvements to the activities. We argue that ‘semantic waves’, or moves back and forth between concrete/simpler and abstract/complex knowledge, help show ways that an unplugged activity might be effective or not, and how small changes to the activities can make a difference in potentially offering a more fruitful learning experienc

Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research