Computational Thinking

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACMM arch 2006/Vol. 49, No. 333 Computational thinkingbuilds on the power andlimits of computingprocesses, whether they are exe-cuted by a human or by amachine. Computationalmethods and models give usthe courage to solve prob-lems and design systems that no one of us wouldbe capable of tackling alone. Computational think-ing confronts the riddle of machine intelligence:What can humans do better than computers? andWhat can computers do better than humans? Mostfundamentally it addresses the question: What iscomputable? Today, we know only parts of theanswers to such questions. Computational Thinking is a fundamental skill foreveryone, not just for computer scientists. To read-ing, writing, and arithmetic, we should add compu-tational Thinking to every child s analytical as the printing press facilitated the spread of thethree Rs, what is appropriately incestuous about thisvision is that computing and computers facilitate thespread of Computational Thinking .

WHAT IT IS, AND ISN’T Computer science is the study of computation— what can be computed and how to compute it. Computational thinking thus has the following characteristics: Viewpoint Thinking like a computer scientist means more than being able to program a computer. It requires thinking at multiple levels of abstraction.

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