ALGORITHMIC THINKING: AN INITIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF COMPUTATIONAL THINKING IN MATHEMATICS.

Computer scientists have reported on "computational thinking," which Aho (2012) defines as thought process involved in formulating problems so their solutions can be represented as computational steps and algorithms" (p. 832). We wanted to investigate such thinking in mathematics. To study this, we interviewed five mathematicians about the role of computation their work, and the notion of "algorithmic thinking" developed from these interviews. We foun mathematicians value this thinking, and in this paper we define algorithmic thinking and prese number of applications and affordances of such thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]