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Queen Mary University of London
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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.
The Four Aces
This magic trick from the Computer Science for Fun team at QMUL shows that computing is about more than just programming and computational thinking is about more than just algorithms.
A simple mathematical approach is taken with dealt piles of cards – this allows the dealer to control the whereabouts of the four aces. Coupled with a bit of misdirection, the dealer then appears to ‘steal’ the aces from a person who thought they were holding a winning hand.
The trick is a ‘self-working’ trick – an algorithm – which is guaranteed to work every time, as long as it is done in the same way.
The resource goes on to explain that, while magicians aim for misdirection and mistake-making, computer scientists try to minimise human errors. Both are rooted in cognitive psychology which is an important factor in human-computer interaction research.
Extension activities and further reading are also recommended within the document.
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The four aces (teachers' notes) 428.53 KB
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