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CT@TP Activities
Computational Thinking at Torrey Pines High School
Are you just joining us? Have you missed a workshop? Do you want to revisit
that cool exploration we did last week? Below are links to our activities.
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Original Activities
and Conversations
Unless otherwise noted, the original activities listed below were written by
Abby Brown. These Wolfram Language notebooks contain step-by-step annotations along with extra notes and
options. The links below are listed roughly in the order as shared at CT@TP meetings with the earliest
at the top to later at the bottom.
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Coloring
Digits of Pi: How can we visualize the digits of π using color?
This notebook is an activity written for the first meeting of
CT@TP. It provides an introduction to
some of the basics of the Wolfram Language.
- Flag Macaw: Can we
reconstruct an image using flags of countries?
For some students in CT@TP this activity was their first time using the
Wolfram Language. It includes a little image processing and artificial
intelligence.
- Birthday Buddies: Which
famous people share my birthday?
This activity is a fun introduction to using entities and accessing
real-world data within the Wolfram Language.
- Ode to a Title:
What are examples of things I can create with randomness?
This activity demonstrates a few different ways of including randomness in
art and text. For my students and me, this generated a lot of laughs.
Though, beware, I cannot guarantee that all results will be completely
school appropriate.
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Snowflake Manipulate: How can I design snowflakes with no two alike?
This notebook introduces Graphics and Manipulate. The end product is an
interactive module that includes geometric transformations and randomness.
- Pokémon
Machine Learning: Can an A.I. distinguish Pokémon characters?
Machine learning takes many forms. Classifier functions are one
type of artificial intelligence. We will train our own using Classify within
the Wolfram Language.
- GeoGraphics Introduction: How do we use GeoGraphics to create
maps based on data?
This notebook was written by Spencer Shroff and
Joshua Chung to introduce GeoGraphics to CT@TP and the Advanced
Topics in Math class. Fall 2018.
- Playing
with Amusement Parks: Where in the world are there amusement parks?
Create a interactive map that displays amusement parks around the world.
(Modified version for club activity by Simeon Buttery:
Amusement Park
Adventure)
- Entity Exploration:
How do we gather and display information with entities?
This is a follow-up to "Playing with Amusement Parks." It includes
additional examples of how entity data may be used and displayed with
timelines, plots, tabular data, and more.
- A Little Image Processing: What can we do with an image?
Easily create interesting results! This notebook starts with a photograph
and shows several different examples of what can be done within the Wolfram
Language for some image processing.
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Lyrics WordCloud: How do I create a poster representing a favorite song?
This notebook includes fun visualizations using text and a little
image processing. (Note: There is a minor error in Mathematica 11.3 that
makes this one not work well. Stay tuned for version 12.)
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Explorations with Words: A Computational Thinking Conversation
This notebook began as impromptu programming during a CT@TP meeting. It was
inspired by the question "How likely would it be to get an actual word when
five letters are randomly selected from the alphabet?" Here the annotations
do not describe the code, but rather our thought process and flow of the
conversation. (Modified version for club activity by Simeon Buttery:
Word Exploration)
- Alpha
Words: Which letters of the alphabet have words that sound like the
letter name?
This is an excerpt from "Explorations with Words." It also includes a
one-liner version of the code that won Third Place in the annual One-Liner
Competition at the Wolfram Technology Conference 2018.
- Pride &
Prejudice & Cucumber: Some Explorations in Text Analysis
This notebook is a compilation of smaller computational thinking
conversations and explorations. It includes high-level built-in functions
for text analysis as well as more manual exercises that extract words and
sentences from text.
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Video Background Subtraction: An Image Processing Lesson
This notebook was written by Isaac Gelman and demonstrates
a process for finding the background within a video that contains moving
objects. Note that the downloadable file is quite large because it contains
sample video as a long list of images. Isaac was a student in Advanced
Topics in Math and a leader with CT@TP. He presented this project to both
groups in Spring 2018.
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Emoji Face Replace: Can Mathematica act as an alternative to image
editing software?
This notebook was written by Adory Vo and includes steps
for replacing faces with emoji graphics within a photograph. Adory was a student in Advanced Topics in Math and
a leader with CT@TP. He presented this project to both groups in Spring
2019.
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Authors & Average Sentence Lengths: Can we
identify the author of a book from its average sentence length?
Given a book, can we use computational methods to identify its author from a
specific group of authors? In the following activity, we will first explore
some of the Wolfram Language's basic text analysis methods, then apply them
to create an author guessing game using Dynamic! Christine is a student in
Advanced Topics in Math and a leader with CT@TP. She shared this project
with both groups in Spring 2022.
A.I. Adventures from the Computational Thinking Initiatives
The A.I. Adventures are published by the Computational Thinking Initiatives
and are linked to the files on the Wolfram Cloud web site. When viewing an A.I.
Adventure on the Wolfram Cloud, you may select "Open In" at the bottom of the
window and choose from among other useful options, such as downloading the
notebook file so you may run it directly in Mathematica (recommended).
- Can You Break Julius Caesar's Cryptosystem?
This link leads to the first A.I. Adventure done in a CT@TP meeting. It reviews some of the
basics of the Wolfram Language and is a fun activity for students to create
an artificial intelligence that encodes and decodes messages.
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Create Your Own Photo Filter
This A.I. Adventure
introduces some of the basics of working with color and image processing. In
our CT@TP meeting, we used this as the basis of our activity, but changed a
few things around.
- Fantasy Creature
Classifier
This is a PDF file of a Mathematica notebook written by the
Computational Thinking Initiatives. This has some introductory concepts of
machine learning. Note that an internet connection is needed to download
images directly within Mathematica and you may need to log in using your
Wolfram ID.
Additional Resources
Be sure to check out the following pages as well.
Return to CT@TP home page
www.abbymath.com