Computational Thinking

Chi-Chih Yao(Andrew Yao) Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences
  1. Character introduction
  2. Research direction
  3. Major achievements/Contributions

Chinese computer science expert, winner of the 2000 Turing Award, foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences, foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, member of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan, founding member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and director of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Information at Tsinghua University , Professor at the Center for Advanced Research at Tsinghua University, Bowen Chair Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Director of the Tsinghua University-MIT-Chinese University of Hong Kong Theoretical Computer Science Research Center. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. He was the first and only Turing Award winner in China in 2000. He has been a full-time professor at Tsinghua University since 2004 and was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the same year. Elected as a founding member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences in 2015; In 2016, he gave up his U.S. citizenship and became a Chinese citizen, officially becoming an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Kyoto Prize in 2021.

Chi-Chih Yao

Computational theory and its application in cryptography and quantum computing first proposed the complexity of quantum communication, proposed the distributed quantum computing model, and later became the basis of distributed quantum algorithms and the security of quantum communication protocols.


Stage 1: As early as during the doctoral study, Yao Zhizhi proposed the demonstration of the complexity of randomized algorithms and made fundamental innovations in the innovation of data structures. An important subfield of computer science: computational theory of communication complexity and pseudorandom number generation. In "Should tables be sorted?" In this paper, he introduces a data structure abstract model called cell-probe Model, which has been widely used to create lower bound proofs of algorithms.
Stage 2: Yao Zhizhi returned to Stanford University from the computer science department of the University of California, Berkeley, and gradually shifted his research focus from the original algorithm theory to the field of cryptography, computer security and random computing. Later, it has also become one of the basic problems of cryptographic protocol research, and has been widely used to solve many computing problems such as data mining, database query, scientific computing and so on. He laid the foundation of modern cryptography and made fundamental contributions to complexity based cryptography and security formalization methods.
Stage 3: Yao Zhizhi extended the communication seal complexity to the field of quantum computing, completed the theoretical basis of quantum computers, and proposed the distributed quantum computing model, which later became the basis of distributed quantum algorithms and the security of quantum communication protocols. For his fundamental contributions to the theory of computing, including complexity-based pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and the theory of communication complexity, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded him the Turing Award and a million dollar Prize in 2000 in recognition of his significant contributions to the computing world.

Conclusion

Thanks to the Computational Thinking class, I have been provided with valuable skills and knowledge beyond just programming or computer science. First of all, computational thinking is a thinking process that can exist independently from computers, the Internet, artificial intelligence and other technologies. It has exercised my ability to think independently, taught me to deal with problems in a systematic way, and learned how to analyze problems and define their components. And design effective solutions. This kind of thinking is human thinking, not computer thinking. It is people using computational thinking to control computing devices, so as to complete tasks more efficiently and quickly that cannot be completed solely by human power. Secondly, I learned HTML and CSS. These two are important knowledge points for making the front end of a web page. I need to remember the code tags of each part, so as to use these code tags and the correct writing form to write the code language so that it can run successfully. Form a web page; this study not only exercised my memory, but also enhanced my logical reasoning and critical thinking skills, which are very valuable for making decisions and solving problems in the future; on the other hand, it also exercised my creativity and innovation, and can come up with novel solutions to complex problems, because making a web page requires designing it yourself, using the support of CSS to form a unique website. In short, computational thinking has given me learning abilities that I didn't have before.


Learning computational thinking has laid a solid foundation for other disciplines in the computer science major. Other courses such as programming basics and information management are all based on computational thinking for more in-depth study. The code tags and languages of Javascript and Python are related to and similar to HTML and CSS. The most important thing is that these two have algorithms in common, and algorithms and computational thinking have an inseparable correspondence. In practical applications, If you want to implement an effective algorithm, you first need to mobilize computational thinking, go through systematic thinking and design, and then specify the algorithm form; if it is an efficient algorithm, you must have superb computational thinking and abstract the principles of problem solving. , establish a thinking framework, how to refine it to the specific calculation process, and finally form the corresponding algorithm framework; therefore, computational thinking and algorithms are mutually supportive and interdependent. Information management is also a broad field, including computer architecture, database systems and network technology, which all require some programming skills and the ability to skillfully develop and maintain information systems. Information management is the core of computers, and computational thinking is the foundation of computers. These three parts are inseparable. In my subsequent studies, I can skillfully use the basic knowledge provided by computational thinking, and then flexibly apply it to two or more subjects in the future; in the future, I can also work on related topics in enterprises or institutions. The work is solved more perfectly and plays an important role in corporate management and decision support.

Reference

Chi-Chih Yao
Chi-Chih Yao picture