{"title":"Computational Thinking in Science","authors":"P. Denning","doi":"10.1511/2017.124.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1511/2017.124.13","url":null,"abstract":"A quiet but profound revolution has been taking place throughout science. The computing revolution has transformed science by enabling all sorts of new discoveries through information technology. Throughout most of the history of science and technology, there have been two types of characters. One is the experimenter, who gathers data to reveal when a hypothesis works and when it does not. The other is the theoretician, who designs mathematical models to explain what is already known and uses the models to make predictions about what is not known. The two types interact with one another because hypotheses may come from models, and what is known comes from previous models and data. The experimenter and the theoretician were active in the sciences well before computers came on the scene. Computational thinking is generally defined as the mental skills that facilitate the design of automated processes. FULL TEXT Headnote The computer revolution has profoundly affected how we think about science, experimentation, and research. A quiet but profound revolution has been taking place throughout science. The computing revolution has transformed science by enabling all sorts of new discoveries through information technology. Throughout most of the history of science and technology, there have been two types of characters. One is the experimenter, who gathers data to reveal when a hypothesis works and when it does not. The other is the theoretician, who designs mathematical models to explain what is already known and uses the models to make predictions about what is not known. The two types interact with one another because hypotheses may come from models, and what is known comes from previous models and data. The experimenter and the theoretician were active in the sciences well before computers came on the scene. When governments began to commission projects to build electronic computers in the 1940s, scientists began discussing how they would use these machines. Nearly everybody had something to gain. Experimenters looked to computers for data analysis-sifting through large data sets for statistical patterns. Theoreticians looked to them for calculating the equations of mathematical models. Many such models were formulated as differential equations, which considered changes in functions over infinitesimal intervals. Consider for example the generic function / over time (abbreviated f(t)). Suppose that the differences in f(t) over time give another equation, abbreviated g(t). We write this relation as df(t)/dt=g(t). You could then calculate the approximate values of /(f) in a series of small changes in time steps, abbreviated At, with the difference equation f(t+At)=f(t)+Atg(t). This calculation could easily be extended to multiple space dimensions with difference equations that combine values on neighboring nodes of a grid. In his collected works, John von Neumann, the polymath who helped design the first stored program computers, described algorithms fo","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124330174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Bizarre World of Nontransitive Dice:","authors":"James Grime","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvc775mh.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc775mh.11","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127374379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Credits","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvc775mh.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc775mh.26","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122263292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
E. Demaine, M. Demaine, Adam Hesterberg, Quanquan C. Liu, Ron Taylor, Ryuhei Uehara
{"title":"Tangled Tangles","authors":"E. Demaine, M. Demaine, Adam Hesterberg, Quanquan C. Liu, Ron Taylor, Ryuhei Uehara","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691171920.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691171920.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"The Tangle toy [?, ?] is a topological manipulation toy that can be twisted and turned in a variety of different ways, producing different geometric configurations. Some of these configurations lie in 3D space while others may be flattened into planar shapes. The toy consists of several curved, quartercircle pieces fit together at rotational/twist joints. Each quarter-circle piece can be rotated about either of the two joints that connect it to its two neighboring pieces. Fig. 1 shows a couple of Tangle toys that can be physically twisted into many 3D configurations. See [?] for more information and demonstrations of the toy.","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128547268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Six Essential Questions for Problem Solving","authors":"N. Kress","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvc775mh.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc775mh.16","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"338 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116531519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How To Play Mathematics","authors":"M. Wertheim","doi":"10.1515/9780691188720-003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691188720-003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121629499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The World War II Origins of Mathematics Awareness","authors":"M. Barany","doi":"10.1515/9780691188720-018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691188720-018","url":null,"abstract":"Since ancient times, advocates for mathematics have argued that their subject is foundational for many areas of human endeavor, though the areas and arguments have changed over the years. Much newer, however, is the idea that mathematicians should systematically try to promote the usefulness or importance of mathematics to the public. This effort, which I shall generically call “mathematics awareness,” was largely an American invention. One outward manifestation was the 1986 inauguration, by President Ronald Reagan, of the first Mathematics Awareness Week. Every year since then, mathematicians and mathematics educators in the United States have dedicated a week— or, beginning in 1999, the month of April—to raising public awareness of “the importance of this basic branch of science to our daily lives,” as Reagan put it. While today’s mathematics awareness is focused on schools and on peaceful applications of mathematics, a direct line connects it to its origins in a very different kind of activity: mathematicians promoting their expertise to leaders of the American war effort during World War II. Recent mathematics awareness has focused on encouraging The World War II Origins of Mathematics Awareness","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"2 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120997911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
B. Braun, Priscilla S. Bremser, Art M. Duval, E. Lockwood, D. White
{"title":"What Does Active Learning Mean for Mathematicians?","authors":"B. Braun, Priscilla S. Bremser, Art M. Duval, E. Lockwood, D. White","doi":"10.1090/NOTI1472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1090/NOTI1472","url":null,"abstract":"This call is part of a broad movement to increase the use of active and student-centered teaching techniques across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. A landmark 2014 meta-analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [2] highlighted the efficacy of active learning techniques across STEM disciplines. In mathematics specifically, a comprehensive study of student outcomes for inquiry-based learning [3] has further established that active learning methods have a strong positive impact on women and members of other underrepresented groups in mathematics. This movement extends beyond the academic community—for example, at the federal level the White House STEM-for-All initiative [4] includes active learning as one of its three areas of emphasis for the 2017 budget. While robust support from education researchers, funding agencies, public policymakers, and institutions is a critical component of effective active learning implementation, at the end of the day these techniques and methods are put into practice by mathematics faculty leading classes of students. Thus, mathematics faculty need to be well informed about active learning and related topics. Our goal in this article is to provide a foundation for productive discussions about the use of active learning in postsecondary mathematics. We will focus on topics that frequently arise at the department level, namely: definitions of active learning, examples of active learning techniques and environments used by individual faculty or teams of faculty, things to expect when using active learning methods, and common concerns. An extended discussion of these issues and a substantial bibliography can be found in the six-part series on active learning [5] written by the authors for the AMS blog On Teaching and Learning Mathematics.","PeriodicalId":411029,"journal":{"name":"The Best Writing on Mathematics 2018","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125613097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}