<\/p>\n
Should the three Rs be four Rs, as in reading, \u2019riting, \u2019rithmetic, and \u2019rogramming? That\u2019s the argument made by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Jeannette Wing and increasingly by academics from a broad spectrum of disciplines. They insist American education is shorting students, even those who\u2019ll be poets and philosophers, by failing to equip them with the basics of \u201ccomputational thinking,\u201d the general ideas undergirding computing.<\/p>\n
Andrea Berlin, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of archaeology, who specializes in Middle Eastern pottery made during the period from five centuries before Christ to 640 C.E., is one of them. Berlin says archaeological digs and other historical research have uncovered such a mountain of data that \u201cmost archaeologists cannot wrap their arms around it.\u201d She\u2019s hoping to develop a website and app that would allow scholars who aren\u2019t computer scientists to gather, mix, and match that information\u2014by time period, region, and other traits. Then a political scientist, for instance, could \u201ccompare the patterns, intensity, and direction of trade under earlier political regimes as revealed by archaeological evidence, and gain hard data and real insight into the relationship between economies and various imperial systems,\u201d she says. Currently, no one can do that, because \u201cthere\u2019s no venue by which somebody could access the data.\u201d<\/p>\n
Computers and computational thinking have revolutionized the way she regards information and its uses. \u201cI used to think of archaeological data as a great mass comprised of many separate items\u2014whole things,\u201d she says. But like an atom, each individual datum can be split into different attributes, and \u201cdifferent users might want to deploy selections of those attributes for different and various questions,\u201d like that hypothetical political scientist mapping ancient trade routes.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s seeking a grant for her project from the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering<\/a>. The vision of BU trustee Bahaa Hariri (Questrom\u201990) in launching the institute with a $15 million gift<\/a> was exactly what Berlin wants: the marriage of computational techniques and all fields of knowledge. The Hariri institute\u2019s founding director, Azer Bestavros, says computational thinking encourages scholars to ask questions they wouldn\u2019t ask without it. All academicians, he says, will ask more and better questions if they know those questions can be answered.<\/p>\n Bestavros, a CAS professor of computer science, argues for mandatory instruction in computational thinking in high schools and colleges, insisting that there are ways to teach it without plunging nonscientists into a flummoxed coma. \u201cComputational thinking is not programming,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Leonid Reyzin, a CAS associate professor of computer science, seconds that. \u201cComputation simply means working with information. And because we are in the information age, you can\u2019t fully participate in society without such understanding.\u201d For example, says Reyzin, understanding the current debate over congressional legislation to combat online copyright infringement overseas requires rudimentary knowledge of how people get information today, and how the legislation would change that.<\/p>\n A College Board commission currently devising a new high school Advanced Placement course in computer science has flagged general practices defining computational thinking. They include \u201canalyzing the effects of computation,\u201d \u201ccreating computational artifacts\u201d (apps), using abstractions and models, and working effectively in teams.<\/p>\n Some universities already include programming in their computational-thinking-for-dummies courses. Carnegie Mellon, admittedly a techie school, teaches the programming language Ruby, Wheaton College offers Computing for Poets, which requires learning the programming language Python, and the University of Maryland uses Scratch, a visual animation language developed for children.<\/p>\n