At 8:10 PM -0400 4/14/08, David Krings wrote:
tedd wrote:
I'm not saying that he shouldn't answered the question as you
intended, but let's stop and examine this incident -- your question
was:
7) a and b are variables.
a = 10
b = 20
a = b
The new values of a and b are, respectively:
And his answer was:
a= 0.5, b=1
In case you haven't already read this, here is the research paper
about this problem and the various outcomes:
http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf
No, I had not read that -- but the article drives home the point I
was making in that it's very difficult to test a person's ability to
program.
Programming is more akin to the basic method of a person's ability to
resolve and interpret the world around them. I have my own theories,
but I don't think they would be acceptable in academic circles.
But think of this -- we all know that color-blind people see things
differently and that's considered a disability. However, in WWII we
successfully used color-blind personnel to detect camouflaged enemy
positions. Now imagine a color-blind person trying to teach normal
visioned people how to do that. That's the type of problem you run
into teaching programming. But on the same point, a color-blind
person would have little problem explaining that to another
color-blinded person (of course of the same color-blindness). That's
the main reason for the two-humped test results the article mentions.
You either "get-it" or you don't.
Some of the top programmers I ever met, had no formal education. Explain that.
Cheers,
tedd
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