Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Using Magic To Teach Computer Programming, Dale F. Reed, Ronald I. Greenberg

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Magic can be used in project-based instruction to motivate students and provide a meaningful context for learning computer programming. This work describes several magic programs of the “Choose a Number” and “Pick a Card” varieties, making connections to underlying computing concepts.

Magic tricks presented as demonstrations and programming assignments elicit wonder and captivate students’ attention, so that students want to understand and replicate the work to show it to friends and family members. Capturing student interest and curiosity motivates them to learn the underlying programming concepts.

Two “Choose a Number” programs are shown where the computer is able to identify …

Using Magic In Computing Education And Outreach, Ronald I. Greenberg, Dale F. Reed

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This special session explores the use of magic tricks based on computer science ideas; magic tricks help grab students' attention and can motivate them to invest more deeply in underlying CS concepts. Error detection ideas long used by computer scientists provide a particularly rich basis for working such "magic'', with a CS Unplugged parity check activity being a notable example. Prior work has shown that one can perform much more sophisticated tricks than the relatively well-known CS Unplugged activity, and these tricks can motivate analyses across a wide variety of computer science concepts and are relevant to learning objectives across …

Pbw Bases And Marginally Large Tableaux In Type D, Ben Salisbury, Adam Schultze, Peter Tingley

Mathematics and Statistics: Faculty Publications and Other Works

We give an explicit description of the unique crystal isomorphism between two realizations of B(∞) in type D: that using marginally large tableaux and that using PBW monomials with respect to one particularly nice reduced expression of the longest word

Educational Magic Tricks Based On Error-Detection Schemes, Ronald I. Greenberg

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Magic tricks based on computer science concepts help grab student attention and can motivate them to delve more deeply. Error detection ideas long used by computer scientists provide a rich basis for working magic; probably the most well known trick of this type is one included in the CS Unplugged activities. This paper shows that much more powerful variations of the trick can be performed, some in an unplugged environment and some with computer assistance. Some of the tricks also show off additional concepts in computer science and discrete mathematics.

Combinatorial Descriptions Of The Crystal Structure On Certain Pbw Bases (Extended Abstract), Ben Salisbury, Adam Schultze, Peter Tingley

Mathematics and Statistics: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Lusztig's theory of PBW bases gives a way to realize the infinity crystal for any simple complex Lie algebra where the underlying set consists of Kostant partitions. In fact, there are many different such realizations, one for each reduced expression for the longest element of the Weyl group. There is an algorithm to calculate the actions of the crystal operators, but it can be quite complicated. For ADE types, we give conditions on the reduced expression which ensure that the corresponding crystal operators are given by simple combinatorial bracketing rules. We then give at least one reduced expression satisfying our …

An Investigation Of Montmort's "Probleme De Recontres" And Generalizations, Ronald I. Greenberg

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

I have investigated a problem which may be phrased in many ways, such as finding the probability of answering a given number of questions correctly on a randomly-completed matching test which may have a number of extra "dud" answers. I have determined such probabilities, the average number of correct answers, and other allied results. I have also investigated a related problem involving the number of ways of choosing a different element from each of a certain collection of sets.