On countability, enumeration, and how to think like a computer scientist

  • Authors:
  • Chuck Allison;Keith Olson

  • Affiliations:
  • Utah Valley University;Utah Valley University

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

One of the primary aims of a college education is to foster students' ability to think critically and analytically. [1] Many computer science students struggle to understand fundamental principles and techniques such as recursion, inferring qualitative patterns from data, and mathematical induction over countably infinite sets. In this paper we illustrate all of the above while developing pedagogically rich solutions to a common example used in typical CS curricula: enumerating the rational numbers. We go deeper than typical curricula to help students to think like computer scientists do.