Book Image

Applied Computational Thinking with Python

By : Sofía De Jesús, Dayrene Martinez
Book Image

Applied Computational Thinking with Python

By: Sofía De Jesús, Dayrene Martinez

Overview of this book

Computational thinking helps you to develop logical processing and algorithmic thinking while solving real-world problems across a wide range of domains. It's an essential skill that you should possess to keep ahead of the curve in this modern era of information technology. Developers can apply their knowledge of computational thinking to solve problems in multiple areas, including economics, mathematics, and artificial intelligence. This book begins by helping you get to grips with decomposition, pattern recognition, pattern generalization and abstraction, and algorithm design, along with teaching you how to apply these elements practically while designing solutions for challenging problems. You’ll then learn about various techniques involved in problem analysis, logical reasoning, algorithm design, clusters and classification, data analysis, and modeling, and understand how computational thinking elements can be used together with these aspects to design solutions. Toward the end, you will discover how to identify pitfalls in the solution design process and how to choose the right functionalities to create the best possible algorithmic solutions. By the end of this algorithm book, you will have gained the confidence to successfully apply computational thinking techniques to software development.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Computational Thinking
9
Section 2:Applying Python and Computational Thinking
14
Section 3:Data Processing, Analysis, and Applications Using Computational Thinking and Python
20
Other Books You May Enjoy

Problem 1 - Creating a book library

Let's say you have a lot of books and want to create an algorithm that stores information about the books. You want to record each book's title, author, publication date, and number of pages. Create an algorithm for this scenario.

First, let's think about the problem:

  • The number of books I own changes constantly, so I'd want to create something that I can add information to, as needed.
  • I also want to be able to remove books that I no longer own.

While we could use a library, the best solution for this particular problem would be a class. Let's start by creating a class called Books:

ch8_BookLibrary.py

class Books:
    
    def __init__(self, title, author, pubDate, pages):
        self.title = title
        self.author = author
        ...