Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

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 …