Skip to main content
CS Teaching Tips

Main navigation

  • Browse All Tips
  • Tags
  • 3D
  • About
  • Rate Tips
  • Tip Sheets

Challenge students to estimate the answer to a Fermi problem to model problem decomposition.

  • Make sure to choose Fermi problems that students will have enough context for.
    • A famous example of a Fermi problem is "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?"
  • Note from the CS Teaching Tips Team: Visit the Wikipedia pages about Fermi problems and problem decomposition for more information.

More about this tip

Tags

  • Meaningful and Relevant Content
  • Development Methods
External Source
Interview with Clara Cahill
Other Tips By
Other Tips By Clara Cahill

Similar tips

Use Piazza to provide an anonymous Q&A forum where both students and instructors can answer questions.
Seek out others to be part of your mentees’ mentoring team to ensure they have access to a wide network of mentors that can relate to and provide support for the wide variety of situations they’ll encounter.
Foreshadow arrays right after teaching for loops by showing students how to create a 1x6 grid using the rectangle object in the Java objectdraw library because visualizations built off of recently introduced material provide a useful transition.

For more information or to report a bug, contact us at admin@csteachingtips.org. Built with Bootstrap. Powered by Drupal.

Privacy Policy