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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

#101

Post by mywrathacademia »

bfrydl wrote: post #36
harias wrote: post #17

> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with…

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Thinking of the problem as a nested for loop it's intuitive to see how you get 1000 combinations without the numbers being unique but I dont see how to get 720 combinations as the answer when each digit is different. Can you explain where 720 combinations comes from in the context I mentioned?

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

#102

Post by mooreds »

mywrathacademia wrote: post #101
bfrydl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Thinking of the problem as a nested for loop it's intuitive to see how you get 1000 combinations without the numbers being unique but I dont see how to get 720 combinations as the answer when each digit is different. Can you explain where 720 combinations comes from in the context I mentioned?

10 * 9 * 8

The first time you pick, you have 10 different numbers to choose from, the second time, 9, the third time 8.

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

#103

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#104

Post by ggggtez »

mnbvkhgvmj wrote: post #92
avmich wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder if the translator fully understood the questions.

There is no reason to doubt the translator just because you don't like the study's result.

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

#105

Post by [deleted] »

mywrathacademia wrote: post #101
bfrydl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Thinking of the problem as a nested for loop it's intuitive to see how you get 1000 combinations without the numbers being unique but I dont see how to get 720 combinations as the answer when each digit is different. Can you explain where 720 combinations comes from in the context I mentioned?

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by sandGorgon »

witcherchaos wrote: post #38
sandGorgon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I'm specifically referring to India, which is all English. All education in India happens in English - it is our primary official language. I think the difference is in the teachers. This difference is most likely originating because of the education given in univs by good professors. Everyone has access to the online courses/MOOC

> All education in India happens in English That is incorrect. In urban areas in India, schools teach in English but in rural areas it's in Hindi. In urban areas, only if it's a big city, then peer to peer communication is in English. However, in other cities, the only interaction in English is with a teacher; other times is in the native tongue. And even if the students in big cities are learning mainly in English,…

You are accurate of course - but for the entire sample set that would even be in the running for a computer science test would be entirely native to english for most of their lives in India.

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

#107

Post by mfoy_ »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #99
martin_a wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't got the slightest idea of my background but rest assured it's rather the opposite of "well off", coming from a small village in the middle of literally nowhere in Germany. Maybe because of that we're holding values and standards like "do no evil" high, because there are more important things than money. I can't afford a house in a decent area either, but I'm pretty sure I won't fuck up lives with my job.…

How will working for FAANG fuck up people's lives?

If we somehow end up in a dystopian nightmare, I'm 99% certain it will be (at least in part) because of one of those 5 companies.

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

#108

Post by the_jeremy »

mywrathacademia wrote: post #101
bfrydl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Thinking of the problem as a nested for loop it's intuitive to see how you get 1000 combinations without the numbers being unique but I dont see how to get 720 combinations as the answer when each digit is different. Can you explain where 720 combinations comes from in the context I mentioned?

for i = 1-10 for j = 1-10 if i == j break for k = 1-10 if i == j or i == k break log(i,j,k)

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

#109

Post by the_jeremy »

mywrathacademia wrote: post #101
bfrydl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Thinking of the problem as a nested for loop it's intuitive to see how you get 1000 combinations without the numbers being unique but I dont see how to get 720 combinations as the answer when each digit is different. Can you explain where 720 combinations comes from in the context I mentioned?

for i = 1-10

for j = 1-10

if i == j break

for k = 1-10

if i == j or i == k break

log(i,j,k)

(I don't understand HN formatting still)

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

#110

Post by joshvm »

mywrathacademia wrote: post #101
bfrydl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Thinking of the problem as a nested for loop it's intuitive to see how you get 1000 combinations without the numbers being unique but I dont see how to get 720 combinations as the answer when each digit is different. Can you explain where 720 combinations comes from in the context I mentioned?

The questions ask for all permutations of length 3. What you've described is the Cartesian product:

    import itertools

    print(len([x for x in itertools.product(range(10), repeat=3)])) #1000
    print(len([x for x in itertools.permutations(range(10), 3)])) #720
itertools.product essentially does a nested for loop.

The reason it's less is because each number has to be different, so you can't have 000 or 111, etc.

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