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Articles

Do all roads lead to Rome? (Or reductions for dummy travelers)

Pages 181-199
Received 18 Mar 2010
Accepted 03 Jun 2010
Published online: 15 Sep 2010
 
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Reduction is a central ingredient of computational thinking, and an important tool in algorithm design, in computability theory, and in complexity theory. Reduction has been recognized to be a difficult topic for students to learn. Previous studies on teaching reduction have concentrated on its use in special courses on the theory of computing. As a fundamental concept, reduction should be discussed multiple times during a curriculum, starting from first-year studies. In order to support this, we propose intuitive analogies based on the metaphor of traveling that could be used as an aid for illuminating key ideas of reductions on introductory computer science courses.

 

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