Chapter 10 Summary

       I can appreciate the breakdown and separation of the concepts of data, information, and knowledge. So often, data is used to argue both sides of an issue, and too often is it misconstrued as the end-all-be-all, the proof that an assertion is valid. I’ve seen it firsthand, as I love arguing in my personal life, and I have a respect and appreciation even for deceptive rhetoric at times. I also have an appreciation for data because of my common use of it in my occupation as an ICQA associate at a warehouse. This job involves the frequent use of Excel to compile spreadsheets of data regarding inventory errors and their causes. Data aggregation is also something I had done while performing special projects for my employer to identify operations employees who were misbehaving on a consistent basis. Quality never sleeps. 

        I did not realize the extent to which I already implemented computational thinking in my everyday life. Logic and rationalization of every little problem in my life has caused me inadvertently to use decomposition and abstraction extensively, but the book’s description of these concepts did not make any sense to me before the example of the county fair’s “experiment.” I personally find it crazy that the book waits until chapter 10 to define ‘computer program.’ I’ve read 400 pages dedicated to this program and that program and how they interact and whatnot, only to finally find the clear definition at the end of the book. Now that’s funny. Another interesting thing is this chapter’s suggestion of using two different browsers, one with the ‘do not track’ option enabled and one without. I actually already was doing that since I learned about cookies a few chapters ago.