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.
- 1 "The Batch And Terminal (BAT) File System An Introduction," The Pennsylvania State University Computation Center, 1971.Google Scholar
- 2 Berge, C., The Theory of Graphs, Metheun and Wiley, New York, 1966.Google Scholar
- 3 Busacker, R. G. and T. L. Saaty, Finite Graphs and Networks, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1965.Google Scholar
- 4 Ford, L. R., Jr. and D. R. Fulkerson, Flows in Networks, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1962.Google Scholar
- 5 Honkanen, P. A., "Computational Considerations in the Selection of Trees in Weighted Graphs and Networks," Proceedings of the IEEE Mexico International Conference of Networks, Systems and Computers, 1971.Google Scholar
- 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 Scholar
- 7 Maliniak, P. B., "Graph and Network Theory Programming Package," unpublished Masters paper, Computer Science Department, The Pennsylvania State University, 1971.Google Scholar
- 8 "Remote Job Entry System," The Pennsylvania State University Computation Center, 1970.Google Scholar
Index Terms
A student-computer programming system for teaching graph and network theory
Recommendations
A student-computer programming system for teaching graph and network theory
SIGCSE '73: Proceedings of the third SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science educationThis 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 ...
Teaching how to teach computational thinking
ITiCSE 2018: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science EducationComputational Thinking is argued to be an essential skill for the workforce of the 21st century. As a skill, Computational Thinking should be taught in all schools, employing computational ideas integrated into other disciplines. Up until now, questions ...






Comments