Unit 10 - Computational Thinking

Question 1

What is abstraction? (Thinking abstractly)
Give a few examples.

Answer 1

Removing unnecessary details and only including the relevant ones. (Based off of what does and doesn’t matter to solving the problem)

e.g: Variables, Objects, data structures, symbols on a map, etc.

Question 2

What is thinking ahead?
What is caching?

Answer 2

1. Planning inputs, outputs and reusable components which you’ll be using.
2. Data which has been used is stores temporarily in case it’s needed again. (Using RAM instead of secondary storage)

Question 3

What is top-down design?

Answer 3

• Looking at a problem as a whole to identify main components to break down into smaller modules

Question 4

What is divide and conquer?

Answer 4

• Recursively splitting a problem (divided) into small manageable subproblems
• which are each solved (conquered) separately
• and combined at the end to form a solution to the main problem

Question 5

What is backtracking?

Answer 5

• An algorithmic approach to a large problem
• where partial solutions are slowly built up
• then abandoned if they fail, returning to the last successful point
• until a solution is found

Question 6

What is data mining?

Answer 6

• Analysing large amounts of data to provide new information
• useful to search for subtle relationships and information