CIE A Level Computer Science (9618) – 19 Computational Thinking and Problem Solving

What Will You Learn?

• Understand and implement linear and binary search algorithms.
• Learn the conditions necessary for using binary search and analyse its performance based on data size.
• Explore and implement insertion sort and bubble sort algorithms.
• Analyse how initial data order and data size impact sorting performance.
• Write algorithms to perform insertion, deletion, and search operations for various data structures.
• Examine the characteristics and applications of graphs as ADTs.
• Discover how certain ADTs can be implemented using others or through built-in data structures.
• Understand practical applications of stack, queue, linked list, dictionary, and binary tree ADTs.
• Compare Algorithm Efficiency with Big O Notation.
• Learn to evaluate and compare algorithms based on time and space complexity.
• Understand how to choose appropriate algorithms depending on task requirements and constraints.
• Grasp the essential features of recursion and how it’s implemented in programming languages.
• Learn to write and trace recursive algorithms.
• Discover when recursion is beneficial and explore stack unwinding as part of recursive operations.
• Understand how a compiler handles recursive code, including stack management and function calls.