TY - GEN
T1 - Non-determinism in CS high-school curricula
AU - Armoni, Michal
AU - Gal-Ezer, Judith
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2003 IEEE.
Copyright:
Copyright 2015 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2003
Y1 - 2003
N2 - One of the units in the relatively new high school CS curriculum which is being implemented in Israel is a theoretical unit on computational models. It includes deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata, regular and non-regular languages, closure properties of regular languages, pushdown automata, closure properties of context free languages, Turing machines, the Church-Turing thesis and the halting problem. This paper focuses on part of a study we conducted on the unit, dealing with the topic of non-determinism of finite automata. One of the aspects dealt with was how students perceived non-determinism. 339 students were given a relatively complicated regular language, and asked to construct a finite automaton that accepts this language. We found that many students did not choose the easiest way to solve the problem: Many students preferred to construct a deterministic automaton, even though constructing a non-deterministic automaton for the language is much simpler. We analyze and categorize the students' solutions, thus shedding some light on their perception of the abstract concept of non-determinism.
AB - One of the units in the relatively new high school CS curriculum which is being implemented in Israel is a theoretical unit on computational models. It includes deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata, regular and non-regular languages, closure properties of regular languages, pushdown automata, closure properties of context free languages, Turing machines, the Church-Turing thesis and the halting problem. This paper focuses on part of a study we conducted on the unit, dealing with the topic of non-determinism of finite automata. One of the aspects dealt with was how students perceived non-determinism. 339 students were given a relatively complicated regular language, and asked to construct a finite automaton that accepts this language. We found that many students did not choose the easiest way to solve the problem: Many students preferred to construct a deterministic automaton, even though constructing a non-deterministic automaton for the language is much simpler. We analyze and categorize the students' solutions, thus shedding some light on their perception of the abstract concept of non-determinism.
KW - Computational model
KW - Deterministic fnite automata
KW - Non-determinism
KW - Non-deterministic finite automata
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84946093467&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/FIE.2003.1264702
DO - 10.1109/FIE.2003.1264702
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AN - SCOPUS:84946093467
VL - 2
T3 - Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
SP - F2C18-F2C23
BT - 33rd Annual Frontiers in Education
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 33rd Annual Frontiers in Education, FIE 2003
Y2 - 5 November 2003 through 8 November 2003
ER -