BUILDING A COMMUNITY OF COMPUTATIONAL THINKERS Wayne Patterson Howard University

This course is now in the catalog as SYCS 501, 3 credits Being offered this Fall CIRTL Students + others Math Department has asked for a variation of this course (probably at a 1-credit level) for Spring 2011

ulang tahun verjaardag Cumpleaños

There are: 365 days in a year 25 people in a group So whats the chance that for a given group of 25, two people will have the birthdate (not necessarily the same year)? 365 days …………. 25 people …… = 6.8% Something that occurs with 6.8% probability occurs once every 14.6 times

Arizona Diamondbacks Active Roster 6Stephen DrewL-R /16/83 4Rusty RyalR-R /16/83 1

Chicago Cubs Active Roster 45Sean MarshallL-L /30/82 24Marlon ByrdR-R /30/77 2

Florida Marlins Active Roster 2Hanley RamirezR-R /23/83 12Cody RossR-L /23/80 3

Kansas City Royals Active Roster 57Brad ThompsonR-R /31/82 3Yuniesky Betancourt R-R /31/82 4

New York Mets Active Roster 25Pedro FelicianoL-L /25/76 19Gary MatthewsS-R /25/74 5

New York Yankees Active Roster 29Francisco CervelliR-R /06/86 38Marcus ThamesR-R /06/77 6

Toronto Blue Jays Active Roster 21Randy RuizR-R /19/77 19Jose BautistaR-R /19/80 7

Philadelphia Phillies Active Roster 21Wilson ValdezR-R /20/78 28Jayson WerthR-R /20/79 8

St Louis Cardinals Active Roster 4Yadier MolinaR-R /13/82 47Ryan LudwickR-L /13/78 9

San Diego Padres Active Roster 54Joe ThatcherL-L /04/81 18Tony GwynnL-R /04/82 10

San Francisco Giants Active Roster 52Brandon MeddersR-R /26/80 56Andres TorresS-R /26/78 11

Seattle Mariners Active Roster 32Rob JohnsonR-R /22/82 5Mike SweeneyR-R /22/73 12

Washington Nationals Active Roster 32Brian BruneyR-R /17/82 16Josh WillinghamR-R /17/79 13

Hopes for the Course Think of a question where your first instinct is a qualitative analysis Learn how to recast the problem computationally Acquire some tools to facilitate the computations Design approaches to teaching the computational approach Carry out the computational solution and the TAR approach

Example 2: Oprah Winfreys Cars There is a lady named Oprah She has a television show She gives away cars to some of her fans But she has a problem She only has ten shows left before she retires But she has 500 cars to give away But being a fair person, she doesnt want to give an additional car to one of her audiences that increase the ratio between the number of persons per car

SOLUTION: The Oprah-Huntington-Hill Algorithm

Example 3: Counting Heads How do we take a census? 1, 2, 3, 4, … HTC Tracts What are they, where are they, how big are they Undercount How to estimate it, whats the potential cost Sampling techniques

Example 4: Pay Baseball Players or Soccer Players? I use some of my retirement income and buy the New York Yankees and Manchester United Will I get a better return (in terms of wins) by paying higher salaries to my baseball team or my soccer team?