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In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

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Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#81

Post by charlesbradshaw »

It feels like we're at a point where people have to be sorry if they find a difference between genders. This article put the gender graph at the end and moved on without discussion, as compared to every other graph, so I looked at the paper[1] and they do the same thing.

Is this study so flawed that the results are meaningless and shouldn't be discussed, or are the results meaningful and the authors will get backlash if they discuss their findings?

I'm curious why they even put the gender graph in the paper. They didn't look at differences in Elite Institutions like they did for countries. They certainly have more data than I do, but I'm left to make my own uninformed conclusion.

[1]:https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/12/1814646116

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#82

Post by jbob2000 »

ionised wrote: post #70
jbob2000 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about culture? Computer programming languages and paradigms have all been developed under western culture; they're written in english with logic that is derived from western philosophy. Without being fully absorbed in this culture, you will lack the key thing that makes you go "ah ha! I get it!"

That would be a good explanation if people from other cultures couldn't program worth a damn, but they clearly can.

Yes, they can still program, but not as good as the US (clearly). I didn't say that culture was the defining factor of being able to program or not, just that it could be the factor for what puts the US on top of other countries.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#84

Post by djtriptych »

avmich wrote: post #67
mnbvkhgvmj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question first and foremost tests English reading abilities. Many mathematically gifted non-native speakers (and indeed native speakers) would miss-understand the "different".

"The exam was translated for the students in China and Russia."

Would love to see results compared to a Chinese or Russian-first test later translated to English.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#85

Post by blocked_again »

Does ACM ICPC has to do anything with computer science skills? Because that competetion is dominated by Russian and Asian students and US universities come nowhere close.

https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/results

Google Summer of Code on the other hand is dominated by Indian Students.

TLDR: If it's a level playing field I don't think US students would be in front of other countries.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#86

Post by djtriptych »

Seems like we're really just testing standard of living or per capita income. It'd be surprising if these results were out of line with figures like that.

Not sure we're doing anything better than these other countries other than remaining the world's only superpower.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#87

Post by qntty »

blocked_again wrote: post #85

Does ACM ICPC has to do anything with computer science skills? Because that competetion is dominated by Russian and Asian students and US universities come nowhere close. https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/results Google Summer of Code on the other hand is dominated by Indian Students. TLDR: If it's a level playing field I don't think US students would be in front of other countries.

More likely, the smartest students in each country work on things that have landed older students good jobs. In US, that means preparing for interviews at big tech companies. In Russia and India, it means something different.

Averages in a country don't really say much about the smartest students in that country anyway. It seems likely that the smartest students in China, India and the US are similarly gifted.

If you look at the average high school student in the US, you might conclude that Americans are pretty stupid, but the averages are brought down by the obscene amount of educational inequality in the US. American CS students aren't so affected by this because they mostly come from the "good" schools.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#88

Post by tathougies »

jbob2000 wrote: post #65
ummonk wrote: post #24

> making sure that both the educational institutions and students enrolled at those schools were statistically representative of schools and computer science students throughout the respective nations. Given the typical CS student body, this basically means Indian, Chinese, and Russian students studying at US universities performed better than those studying at Indian, Chinese, and Russian universities... Either beca…

What about culture? Computer programming languages and paradigms have all been developed under western culture; they're written in english with logic that is derived from western philosophy. Without being fully absorbed in this culture, you will lack the key thing that makes you go "ah ha! I get it!"

It is interesting for sure. Americans -- far more than many other countries that I've lived in -- are incredibly legalistic, which, while perhaps annoying in personal life, is a boon when it comes to programming / computers.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#89

Post by sidlls »

martin_a wrote: post #19
sidlls wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On average the best paying and most technically interesting ones are.

> most technically interesting Like making six figures a year for screwing people over at Facebook? Sorry for being snarky, but lots of jobs in IT businesses in the US tend to be somewhat unhelpful for the society at all and not really providing any benefit in the long term. In regard of this I'm always somewhat "happy" that we fail in Europe with building "the next Google", "the next Facebook" or whatever.

Well, I didn't assign any moral value to the work. On that subject, it is a rare employer that doesn't engage in morally questionable activity, in my experience.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#90

Post by dominotw »

yorwba wrote: post #49
ummonk wrote: post #24

> making sure that both the educational institutions and students enrolled at those schools were statistically representative of schools and computer science students throughout the respective nations. Given the typical CS student body, this basically means Indian, Chinese, and Russian students studying at US universities performed better than those studying at Indian, Chinese, and Russian universities... Either beca…

The study (which I didn't see linked in the article, so here it is: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/12/1814646116 ) also tried to investigate this question by restricting their analysis to students at US universities whose strongest language is English (89.1% of their sample) or those who claim two strongest languages and didn't find a significant difference to the overall US student population. That doesn…

English is my strongest language. Indians do almost all their study in english. So thats not a good indicator.
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