Computational thinking
By one of the many definitions, computational thinking is the thought process involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution(s) in such a way that a computer—human or machine—can effectively carry out.
Another characterization of computational thinking is an iterative process based on three stages (captured by the AAA Computational Thinking Process figure to the right):
- Abstraction: Problem formulation;
- Automation: Solution expression;
- Analyses: Solution execution and evaluation.
The history of computational thinking dates back at least to the 1950s but most ideas are much older. The term computational thinking was first used by Seymour Papert in 1980 and again in 1996. Computational thinking can be used to algorithmically solve complicated problems of scale, and is often used to realize large improvements in efficiency.