Designed for undergraduate social science students, this textbook concentrates on using the computer in a straightforward way to manipulate numbers and variables in order to solve problems. The text is problem oriented and assumes that the student has had little prior experience with either a computer or programing languages. An introduction to…

The first section of this course on programming introduces LISP as a programming language designed to do symbol manipulation, with consequent prevalence in auto-instructional (AI) work. A programming language specifies in its description a number of primitive operations which the computer knows how to perform. An algorithm is the set of…

Useful programming tricks are suggested to allow the reduction of many equations and non-polynomial-like expressions and the subsequent application of the mathematical algorithms. (Author)

The repetitious nature of music is thought to be very similar to the repetitious nature of computer algorithms. Subroutines are seen to be very effectively applied to music notation, through reducing repetitious entry and the amount of memory required to represent a musical score. Examples of subroutine use are provided. (MP)

A description is provided of a computer system designed to aid in the analysis of student programing work. The first section of the report consists of an overview and user's guide. In it, the system input is described in terms of a "dribble file" which records all student inputs generated; also an introduction is given to the aids…

Built-in data structures are the registers and memory words where binary values are stored; hard-wired algorithms are the fixed rules, embodied in electronic logic circuits, by which stored data are interpreted as instructions to be executed. Various topics related to these two basic elements of every computer program are discussed. (JN)

Proposes a programing design curriculum based on three conceptual areas: process, symbolic representation, and methods of interpretation; and describes computer games and simulations in which design skills of simple and conditional sequencing, rule or constraint specification, hypothesis testing, and modeling are employed. (Author/CMV)

Suggests a moving pictorial tool to help teach principles in the bubble sort algorithm. Develops such a tool applied to an unsorted list of numbers and describes a method to derive the run time of the algorithm. The method can be modified to run the times of various other algorithms. (JN)

This paper describes PAL--a new computer language. It is used as a pedagogical vehicle in an undergraduate subject called "Programming Linguistics." This subject is designed primarily for sophomores who anticipate a major professional interest in computer science and has two objectives. The first is to study linguistic constructs for the…

Describes "Josef," a robot programing language similar to the LOGO turtle language, which has been designed as an instructional system through which the algorithmic problem-solving skills required in computer programing can be developed and tested in a controlled learning environment. Four figures and a reference list are included. (JL)

In this paper, prepared for a European conference on mathematics education, the author examines three types of computer use in undergraduate and high school classrooms: Using the computer as an instructional tool for student development of algorithms, teaching about the computer itself, and use of computer-assisted instruction. (SD)

As part of an introductory computer programming course, students were assigned seven programs selected to expose them to the varied applications of BASIC. Three additional programs were selected by the students themselves from other courses or from topics in the text which had not been covered in class. The topic which seemed to arouse the…

Proposes that the first computer language course for students of management should teach the reading of the language rather than the writing of programs in that language. "Reading" means the study of the programing language literature, including a variety of algorithms, to understand the language, inputs, and program use. (MF)

Several computer programs were developed to solve various versions of the quadratic capacitated facilities location problem. Matrices, which represent various business costs, are defined for the factors of sites, facilities, customers, commodities, and production units. The objective of the program is to find an optimization matrix for the lowest…

Presented is a way to provide students with a review and an appreciation of the versatility of pointers in data structures by improvising with binary trees. Examples are described using the Pascal programing language. (KR)