Learning to program with math

This book is aimed at people who want to learn to program and who enjoy mathematics. It offers an introduction to programming in a mathematical context. Computer programming has become an important issue in our society. Quebec's educational community is currently reflecting on the didactic and civic issues involved in integrating programming into schools, and the support it can provide for school subjects.

The special feature of this book is the link between mathematics and computer programming. All the examples and exercises used in this book are mathematical. Algorithmic thinking, the kind of thinking that goes into programming, shares many characteristics with mathematical thinking. One can be used to develop the other. We have chosen to illustrate our approach with the Scratch platform, but our algorithmic approach is general, and the examples given can be programmed in other programming languages. This book is not, therefore, an introduction to Scratch per se. It does not, for example, provide information on the enormous possibilities for animation and visual creation in Scratch. It focuses on the algorithmic and mathematical possibilities that can be exploited in Scratch.