Since I retired I have been reading more computer science related books. You may have read my book reviews on Humble Pi, Weapons of Math Destruction, or Computer Science in K-12. More and more I realize that I missed out on a lot of good ideas and information. Each of those books has given me ideas that I wish I had thought of a long time ago.
Currently, I am reading Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers. I haven’t gotten very far yet but the book has covered indexing of web pages, PageRank, and public key encryption so far. I’ve started the chapter on error detection. Pattern recognition, data compression, data bases, and more are yet to come. I’m really looking forward to data compression. Teaching AP CS Principles has built up an interest that I didn’t have before.
The indexing chapter is one I had read long ago. Many years ago I experimented with indexing. I wrote some code that indexed the Bible for me. The program was more general purpose than that but the Bible seemed like a good challenge. The program used a list of words and a text file of a book as input. It output a markup language file that worked with a product called VAX Document. VAX Document read the markup language, called SDML, and formatted a document including an index. I wish I still had the code so I could adapt it for some other backend processors. Sigh.
In any case, the idea of creating and assigning indexing projects has some appeal for me. I can see this being interesting for students especially in the context of understanding search engines and more involved search queries.
Other chapters include a lot of information that would be helpful in understanding and explaining various important concepts. And maybe inspire still more programming projects! So I do recommend this book to AP CS Principles teachers.
PS: More of my book reviews at http://blog.acthompson.net/search/label/book%20reviews
2 comments:
If only high school computer science teachers had time to read books. This semester when I get home I just want a beer or a glass of wine and to stop having to think. Thinking is work and these smart kids make me do it all day.
I was able to read a few more technical books amongst my standard summer "beach reads" that require less thought. Really enjoyed Technically Wrong - would be a good one to pull chapters from for AP CSP. Also, Broadband: The Untold Story of the Women Who Created the Internet was a fun history lesson!
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