Mauro Torelli

What's the fun in informatics? working to capture children and teachers into the pleasure of computing

The importance of computer science education in secondary, and even primary school, has been pointed out by many authors. But too often pupils only experience ICT, both at home and at school, and confuse it with computer science. We organized a game-contest, the KangourouofInformatics, with the aim to attract all pupils (not only the talented ones), expose them to the scientific aspects of informatics in a fun way, and convey a correct conception of the discipline. Peculiarities of the game are its focus on team work and on engaging pupils in discovering what lays behind what they experience every day.

Informatics Education in Italian Secondary Schools

This article describes the state of informatics education in the Italian secondary schools, highlighting how the learning objectives set up by the Ministry of Education are difficult to meet, due to the fact that the subject is often taught by teachers not holding an informatics degree, the lack of suitable teaching material and the expectations of pupils and families, who tend to identify informatics with the use of computer applications.

Exploring the processing of formatted texts by a kynesthetic approach

We describe a teaching activity about word-processors we proposed to a group of 25 pupils in 9th/10th grades of an Italian secondary school. While the pupils had some familiarity with word-processor operations, they had had no formal instruction about the automatic elaboration of formatted texts. The proposed kinesthetic/tactile activities turned out to be a good way for conveying non-trivial abstract computing concepts.

How Challenging are Bebras Tasks?: An IRT Analysis Based on the Performance of Italian Students

This paper analyses the results of the 2014 edition of the Italian Bebras/Kangourou contest, exploiting the Item Response Theory statistical methodology in order to infer the difficulty of each of the proposed tasks starting from the scores attained by the participants. Such kind of analysis, enabling the organizers of the contest to check whether or not the difficulty perceived by pupils was substantially different from that estimated by those who proposed the tasks, is important as a feedback in order to gain knowledge to be used both in ranking participants and in organizing future editions of the contest. We show how the proposed analysis essentially highlights that the 63% of tasks was perceived at the same level of difficulty estimated by those who proposed them, but a 37% of tasks were either easier or more difficult than expected.

A mathematical model for analysing and structuring musical texts

Abstract We show that it is possible to analyse and describe the structure of musical texts in a compact form by identifying the passages which can be obtained from preceding passages by applying suitable operators. We consider a number of operators of musical interest and report some preliminary results of the analysis of a few pieces of music.

An algebraic approach to problem solution and problem semantics

The usual approach to the synthesis of algorithms for the solution of problems in combinatorial mathematics consists of two steps.

Sulla complessità di alcuni problemi di conteggio

This paper is intended to show that an algebraic approach can give useful suggestions to design efficient algorithms solving combinatorial problems. The problems we discusses in the paper are:a)Counting strings of given length generated by a regular grammar. For this problem, we give an exact algorithm whose complexity is 0 (logn) (with respect to the number of executed operations), and an approximate algorithm which however still has the same order of complexity;b)counting trees recognized by a tree automaton. For this problem, we give an exact algorithm of complexity 0(n) and an approximate one of complexity 0 (logn). For this approximate algorithm the relative error is shown to be 0 (1/n).

Three efficient algorithms for counting problems

Counting structures is a relevant part of combinatorial mathematics, and some counting problems on sets of strings or trees, related to the theory of automata and languages, have a particular interest for theoretical computer science. It is thus important to look for algorithms which automaiically solve some classes of counting problems. In a former work, we have presented a general methodology to rigorously tackle problems of this kind [2]. The method, that we have formalized in the frame of category theory [9 1, is originated from the algebraic approach first proposed b\i Chomsky and Schuetzenberger [3]. This approach consists in describing the problem on a suitable algebraic structure, e.g. a semiring of formal power seriez:l, by means of a system of equations, then mapping thrs system in a system on the structure of the possible solutions by a homomorphism and finally solving the new system (i.e., finding its least fmed point). Obviously, the actual choice of the fmal algebraic structure ;uld of the homomorphism depends on the specific problem considered. The aforesaiti method does not directly produce a specific algorithm for a given problem, because it leaves open some problems of precomputation; it has however a great heuristic value since the possibilityl of directly describing the solution of a problem as the

ANALYSIS AND COMPACTING OF MUSICAL TEXTS

In this paper we examine the possibility of analyzing, according to a precise mathematic model, the structure of musical texts, and of describing them in a compact form. The approach that we have followed was to identify in the text, appropriately coded, some passages which can be obtained from preceding passages by applying to them suitable operators. These passages can be coded synthetically with a reference to the preceding passage and the operator applied to it. This approach may be used not only for musical texts, but in general, for any structure that can be considered constituted of various fundamental substructures which repeat themselves, unchanged or modified by suitable operators, inside the same structure. We give, in this general frame, a theoretical evaluation of the minimum and maximum “compacting value” which can be obtained considering repetitions only, and we also give an algorithm to calculate such a value for a given sequence. Then we specifically consider some classes of operators, se...

Extracurricular Activities for Improving the Perception of Informatics in Secondary Schools

In order to introduce informatic concepts to students of Italian secondary schools, we devised a number of interactive workshops conceived for pupils aged 10–17. Each workshop is intended to give pupils the opportunity to explore a computer science topic: investigate it firsthand, make hypotheses that can then be tested in a guided context during the activity, and construct viable mental models. This paper reports about how we designed and conducted these workshops.