The first thing that can be done to assess the logical reasoning of your student is entirely based on what we generally do in our daily lives. To begin with, we might look out for a question like,
- "What can be the necessary steps and conditions for opening an umbrella when you move out of your house??"
or maybe
- "What all routes can be taken care for reaching a particular destination??"
or lets say
- "What are the possible techniques for cheating in an examination??"
Whatever the question is, it should be fun because the more generalized we can make a beginner think, the more deeper we can penetrate them through their answers. The algorithm or step-wise representation of these generalized topics often offers us with a brief knowledge about the person who has written the same.
For convenience, let us move to the first problem that we have here about the necessary steps and conditions involved for opening an umbrella. One might say that,"we move out, if it is raining, we open the umbrella!", another might crop up with a notion that,"I enjoy getting wet in rain but hate going out in a sunny morning and I do require an umbrella in a sunny day!", but then someone might say that,"We will open umbrella either if it is raining or if it is a sunny day!!" whereas someone might just think about a system which can automatically ask the user a question while encountering either of the situations(raining or being in a sunny day) and opens the umbrella if the user desires to do so!!" and so on......... We call this last guy as extra-ordinary and do not expect such answers generally from a beginner and being a programmer one has to consider that the learner will evolve with not even a single answer which is possibly the worst case scenario available here.
The challenge is not about teaching the programmer about how to code in a particular language. It is more about making the learner matured enough to think in a generalized way while writing a program and confident about relating a given problem with similar kind of problems that we face in our day-to-day lives. The upcoming blogs will help us to dive in deeper into the beginner's mind and we will come across certain activities that can be done to enhance the logical sense of the beginner.
STAY TUNED..................................................
