Search the California Content Standards

Standard:
Justify the selection of specific control structures by identifying tradeoffs associated with implementation, readability, and performance.

Descriptive Statement:
The selection of control structures in a given programming language impacts readability and performance. Readability refers to how clear the program is to other programmers and can be improved through documentation. Control structures at this level may include, for example, conditional statements, loops, event handlers, and recursion. Students justify control structure selection and tradeoffs in the process of creating their own computational artifacts. The discussion of performance is limited to a theoretical understanding of execution time and storage requirements; a quantitative analysis is not expected. For example, students could compare the readability and program performance of iterative and recursive implementations of procedures that calculate the Fibonacci sequence. Alternatively, students could compare the readability and performance tradeoffs of multiple if statements versus a nested if statement.

Standard:
Iteratively design and develop computational artifacts for practical intent, personal expression, or to address a societal issue by using events to initiate instructions.

Descriptive Statement:
In this context, relevant computational artifacts can include programs, mobile apps, or web apps. Events can be user-initiated, such as a button press, or system-initiated, such as a timer firing. For example, students might create a tool for drawing on a canvas by first implementing a button to set the color of the pen. Alternatively, students might create a game where many events control instructions executed (e.g., when a score climbs above a threshold, a congratulatory sound is played; when a user clicks on an object, the object is loaded into a basket; when a user clicks on an arrow key, the player object is moved around the screen).

Standard:
Translate between different representations of data abstractions of real-world phenomena, such as characters, numbers, and images.

Descriptive Statement:
Computers represent complex real-world concepts such as characters, numbers, and images through various abstractions. Students translate between these different levels of data representations. For example, students could convert an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) tag for red font into RGB (Red Green Blue), HEX (Hexadecimal Color Code), HSL (Hue Saturation Lightness), RGBA( Red Green Blue Alpha), or HSLA (Hue Saturation Lightness and Alpha) representations. Alternatively, students could convert the standard representation of a character such as ! into ASCII or Unicode.

Standard:
Describe tradeoffs associated with how data elements are organized and stored.

Descriptive Statement:
People make choices about how data elements are organized and where data is stored. These choices affect cost, speed, reliability, accessibility, privacy, and integrity. Students describe implications for a given data organziation or storage choice in light of a specific problem. For example, students might consider the cost, speed, reliability, accessibility, privacy, and integrity tradeoffs between storing photo data on a mobile device versus in the cloud. Alternatively, students might compare the tradeoffs between file size and image quality of various image file formats and how choice of format may be infuenced by the device on which it is to be accessed (e.g., smartphone, computer).

Standard:
Compare and contrast fundamental data structures and their uses.

Descriptive Statement:
Data structures are designed to provide different ways of storing and manipulating data sets to optimize various aspects of storage or runtime performance. Choice of data structures is made based on expected data characteristics and expected program functions. Students = compare and contrast how basic functions (e.g.., insertion, deletion, and modification) would differ for common data structures including lists, arrays, stacks, and queues. For example, students could draw a diagram of how different data structures change when items are added, deleted, or modified. They could explain tradeoffs in storage and efficiency issues. Alternatively, when presented with a description of a program and the functions it would be most likely to be running, students could list pros and cons for a specific data structure use in that scenario.

Standard:
Demonstrate the flow of execution of a recursive algorithm.

Descriptive Statement:
Recursion is a powerful problem-solving approach where the problem solution is built on solutions of smaller instances of the same problem. A base case, which returns a result without referencing itself, must be defined, otherwise infinite recursion will occur. Students represent a sequence of calls to a recursive algorithm and show how the process resolves to a solution. For example, students could draw a diagram to illustrate flow of execution by keeping track of parameter and returned values for each recursive call. Alternatively, students could create a video showing the passing of arguments as the recursive algorithm runs.