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
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Problem 2 – Using Python to write stories

Let's look at a fairly simple problem. In this section, we want to create an algorithm that produces a story based on input from a user. We can make this as simple as we want, or add some options. But let's dig into what this is.

Defining, decomposing, and planning a story

First of all, what is it we're trying to create? Well, a story. Because of the nature of this problem, we're going to start in reverse, with a sample of the output we want to achieve, that is, a sample story. Let's take a look at a quick story generated by our algorithm before we actually get into the algorithm:

There once was a citizen in the town of Narnia, whose name was Malena. Malena loved to hang with their trusty dog, King Kong.
You could always see them strolling through the market in the morning, wearing their favorite blue attire.

The preceding output was created by an algorithm that substituted names, locations, time...