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4.1.19

Construct an abstraction from a specified situation.

 

Teaching Note:

There is no need to use code.

Levels of abstraction through successive decomposition.

A school can be decomposed into faculties. A faculty can be decomposed into departments.

LINK Thinking ahead, thinking procedurally. Connecting computational thinking and program design, introduction to programming.


 

Sample Question:

sdfsdfsf

JSR Notes:

Note that this and even more so 4.1.20 both focus a bit more on the "things", rather than the "procedures" take on abstraction.

And in "constructing an abstraction", this assessment statement is about how we go agout setting up a situation where we can "ignore the other details". In other words (with Java at least) the preliminary OOP practices of decomposing a big problem into classes, and sub-classes, and then each class decomposed in turn into specialized methods. All of this will allow us to "perform" abstraction later on with focus on one class or one method at a time.


Examples of Constructing (non-Computer) things/data Abstraction

Other examples, besides the Teaching Note one:

 

Examples of Constructing Java data Abstraction

Other examples, besides the Movie database example from before:

 

 

EXTRA Reminder: Abstract Classes and Methods

To "Construct an abstraction from a specified situation", it actually does makes sense to also go a step further than IB CS requires, and look at how you construct actual abstract classes and methods - an Extra in 4.1.17.

So by way of a narrative review, an abstract class and, particularly it's abstract methods, are pure "focus on the essentials, disregarding the details". This is because an abstract method is no more than an idea of what that method should do; it is, in fact, only a method header. It includes a return type and parameter list, but that's it, no implementation at all. The intent (indeed requirement in Java) is that further on down the inheritance hierarchy, a class which extends that abstract class will implement the abstract methods. This does get a little bit involved, and requires a fundamental understanding of inheritance, so rather than include an example here, remind me to code with you an example of this.

Simple Examples of Constructing Java Abstract Class & Methods back in 4.1.17.