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A student-computer programming system for teaching graph and network theory

Published:01 January 1973Publication History
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Abstract

This paper describes a programming system used in the teaching of two Computer Science courses at The Pennsylvania State University (7). The courses are; an upper level undergraduate-beginning graduate level course in graph theory, and a graduate level course in the theory of graphs and networks. As can be ascertained from the description of these courses they are not primarily what would normally be called programming courses. However, since they are computer science courses they do stress the computational aspects of graph and network theory and analysis. Past experiences have indicated that if a computational problem of any reasonable complexity is assigned in class the majority of the students focus an inordinate amount of their energies to the programming problems, and consequently fail to grasp the significant features of the theoretical problems involved. In addition, since graph and network theory encompasses not only computer science, but engineering and physical, and to a lesser extent, the social sciences, many of these students would be unduly burdened by writing many rather complex programs. On the other hand, teaching the computational aspects of graph theory without doing some programming is equally ludicrous. Thus, a default type solution of assigning two or three problems from a narrow set of problems was rapidly becoming an undesirable solution to this dilema. It was at this point that the concept of a dynamically growing programming system, as described in this paper, began to formulate itself.

References

  1. 1 "The Batch And Terminal (BAT) File System An Introduction," The Pennsylvania State University Computation Center, 1971.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
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  6. 6 Honkanen, P. A., "Computer Analysis of Urban Traffic Models Based on Graph and Network Theory," Proceedings of the Third Annual Pittsburgh Conference on Modeling and Simulation, 1972, also to appear in Socio-Economic Systems and Principles edited by W. G. Vogt and M. H. Mickle, School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 1973.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. 7 Maliniak, P. B., "Graph and Network Theory Programming Package," unpublished Masters paper, Computer Science Department, The Pennsylvania State University, 1971.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. 8 "Remote Job Entry System," The Pennsylvania State University Computation Center, 1970.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
        ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 5, Issue 1
        Proceedings of the 3rd SIGCSE symposium on Computer science education
        February 1973
        171 pages
        ISSN:0097-8418
        DOI:10.1145/953053
        Issue’s Table of Contents
        • cover image ACM Conferences
          SIGCSE '73: Proceedings of the third SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
          January 1973
          185 pages
          ISBN:9781450373753
          DOI:10.1145/800010

        Copyright © 1973 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 1 January 1973

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