One of the things about teaching Computer Studies is having data
sets for students to run with their program to get the types of
results that you should. During program development, I always
found that it was desirable to talk to the students about how to
create their own data sets to meet the specifications of the
program. It shows that they can read and understand what is
needed and generating data that allow them to work through a
problem manually and compare their results to what is generated
by their program is a great technique to master. Of course, when
it comes to testing the accurateness of their program, you want
to have your own data sets. I would make it available as a file
that they would read and present the results. Since I know what
the results should look like, it’s a quick and easy way to test
their programming skills. It’s also handy to have a couple of
data sets to completely test the program and also to check if
the student requires multiple runs in order to get it right.
Sometimes, gener