Abstraction and automation key terms

Boolean expression

An expression made from Boolean values, Boolean operators and possibly variables that evaluates to true or false.

Truth table

A table showing every possible combination of Boolean inputs and the resulting output for a logic expression.

Selection

A construct that chooses which step or branch to follow based on a condition.

Iteration

A construct that repeats one or more steps.

Representational abstraction

A representation arrived at by removing unnecessary details.

Abstraction by generalisation or categorisation

Grouping by common characteristics to arrive at a hierarchical relationship of the 'is a kind of' type.

Information hiding

The process of hiding all details of an object that do not contribute to its essential characteristics.

Essential characteristic

A characteristic that contributes to describing what an object essentially is and should therefore be retained when applying information hiding.

Procedural abstraction

The abstraction of actual values from a particular computation so that the underlying computational method can be represented.

Procedure

A representation of a computational method or computational pattern.

Procedural abstraction

An abstraction whose result is a procedure.

Functional abstraction

An abstraction that disregards the particular computation method and treats the result as a function.

Data abstraction

A methodology that hides the actual representation of data and separates the use of a compound data object from its construction.

Compound data object

A new kind of data object constructed from previously defined types of data objects.

Abstraction

The process of removing details from a problem until it is represented in a way that is possible to solve.

Problem reduction

Representing a problem as one that has already been solved so that its known solution can help solve the new problem.

Procedural decomposition

Breaking a problem into a number of sub-problems, so that each sub-problem accomplishes an identifiable task.

Sub-problem

A part of a larger problem that accomplishes an identifiable task and may itself be further subdivided.

Composition abstraction

An abstraction created by combining components: procedures are combined to form compound procedures, or data objects are combined to form compound data.

Compound data

Data formed by combining data objects, such as the data in a tree data structure.

Abstraction

The process of choosing what to include in a model of a real-world object or phenomenon and what to discard, keeping the minimum detail needed for the required solution and accuracy.

Model

An abstraction of a real-world object or phenomenon that can be implemented and used to help solve a problem.