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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

#161

Post by somehnreader »

nickm12 wrote: post #155
yogthos wrote: post #143

Yet, Russia consistently dominates programming competitions, which strongly suggests that a multiple choice exam may not actually be representative of real world skills https://www.salon.com/2017/06/18/russian-students-dominate-a...

Programming competitions are to programming as fencing is to sword-fighting. I'm not trying to denegrate people who compete in programming competitions—they require hard work and talent like any competition, but it is a very specific set of skills that are developed which are different from real-world programming.

Thats also true for multiple choice tests as opposed to real-world programming.

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

#162

Post by ionised »

jbob2000 wrote: post #82
ionised wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think it's a question of skill. The US has more big tech companies because of its approach to business and regulation (if that's what you mean by culture), not the raw skill of its US-born workers.

I mean, look at the leadership of a lot of these companies. They're foreign-born, typically from Asia.

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

#163

Post by enedil »

newman8r wrote: post #44
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…

Funny. Yeah I totally would have missed the word "different"... does such a lock even exist in the real world?

Well, my bank tells me that I can't have 3 equal digits in my debit card PIN.

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

#164

Post by enedil »

nickm12 wrote: post #156
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…

Totally agree with what you say about multiple choice programming tests. I have a PhD in computer science and have worked as a programmer for over a decade. For fun, I took a practice AP CS exam with my son, which had similar multiple choice questions. I did not get 100%. I actually thought the exam was pretty good, but it tested something like 1% of the skills I use as a working programmer. Skills like API design, s…

Maybe that's because computer science is not software development?

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

#165

Post by TulliusCicero »

ggggtez wrote: post #128
charlesbradshaw wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line you quoted isn't discussion, it is stating results. In the article and the paper there is discussion about the differences in education between countries. For example... (From the article) > CS departments and CS education in general have a longer history and are much more established in the United States than in China or India especially. > A lot more is spent per student in the U.S. than in the other three…

You only seem interested in discussing gender to bring up the ghost of genetic predispositions. But if you want to twist the study in that way, you'll have to first say that you think that whites are genetically superior to non-white in the world of computer science. After all, doesn't the study show the gap is even greater for nationality? Just come out and say it, instead of having this proxy argument over gender.…

> You only seem interested in discussing gender to bring up the ghost of genetic predispositions. But if you want to twist the study in that way

This feels really disingenuous. The questions they brought up are perfectly fine, it's you who seems to be intent on poisoning the discussion by attacking them instead of discussing the issue.

> you'll have to first say that you think that whites are genetically superior to non-white in the world of computer science. After all, doesn't the study show the gap is even greater for nationality?

Nationality is not the same thing as race/ethnicity. At the very least, in the US, a substantial percentage of CS majors are of Asian descent, not European.

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

#166

Post by jki275 »

mattkrause wrote: post #136
mywittyname wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of ABET accreditation is to ensure that students are prepared to take the fundamentals of engineering exam. Hardly any CS grads take the exam because it doesn't help you get a job. So it's not a big deal that their CS departments aren't accredited. However, every school you listed is ABET accredited in other engineering disciplines (mechanical, chemical, civil, electrical). So ABET-accreditation is import…

It's not a huge deal, but it's not entirely trivial either. I don't want to be too elitist, but where would you like to recruit reviewers for your computer-related patents from: DeVry Tech or Stanford? Do you really want to actively exclude Princeton and Yale grads from working on software that runs the government? I get the appeal of having a standardized 'seal of approval', but for Computer Science, ABET is clearly…

I've never seen a government requirement for ABET accreditation for CS degrees.

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

#167

Post by mattkrause »

jki275 wrote: post #166
mattkrause wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a huge deal, but it's not entirely trivial either. I don't want to be too elitist, but where would you like to recruit reviewers for your computer-related patents from: DeVry Tech or Stanford? Do you really want to actively exclude Princeton and Yale grads from working on software that runs the government? I get the appeal of having a standardized 'seal of approval', but for Computer Science, ABET is clearly…

I've never seen a government requirement for ABET accreditation for CS degrees.

From the eligibility requirements for the patent agent exam:

Acceptable Computer Science degrees must be accredited by the Computer Science Accreditation Commission (CSAC) of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB), or by the Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), on or before the date the degree was awarded. Computer science degrees that are accredited may be found on the Internet (http://www.abet.org).

[page 6 of this pdf: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OED_GRB....]

A lot of fed jobs have engineering-centric requirements. This one, for example, wants an accredited degree or experience under a PE....to do network management. https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/525193800

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

#168

Post by yogthos »

dh5 wrote: post #153
yogthos wrote: post #143

Yet, Russia consistently dominates programming competitions, which strongly suggests that a multiple choice exam may not actually be representative of real world skills https://www.salon.com/2017/06/18/russian-students-dominate-a...

Are you saying programming competitions are representative of "real world skills"? There's certainly a correlation in the same way the exam is but you'd be hard-pressed to say more than that.

Programming competitions demonstrate problem solving skills a lot better than a multiple choice exam if you ask me.

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

#169

Post by blocked_again »

dh5 wrote: post #153
yogthos wrote: post #143

Yet, Russia consistently dominates programming competitions, which strongly suggests that a multiple choice exam may not actually be representative of real world skills https://www.salon.com/2017/06/18/russian-students-dominate-a...

Are you saying programming competitions are representative of "real world skills"? There's certainly a correlation in the same way the exam is but you'd be hard-pressed to say more than that.

But questions asked in interviews of tech companies are similar to programming competitions than mcqs.

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

#170

Post by ggggtez »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #165
ggggtez wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only seem interested in discussing gender to bring up the ghost of genetic predispositions. But if you want to twist the study in that way, you'll have to first say that you think that whites are genetically superior to non-white in the world of computer science. After all, doesn't the study show the gap is even greater for nationality? Just come out and say it, instead of having this proxy argument over gender.…

> You only seem interested in discussing gender to bring up the ghost of genetic predispositions. But if you want to twist the study in that way This feels really disingenuous. The questions they brought up are perfectly fine, it's you who seems to be intent on poisoning the discussion by attacking them instead of discussing the issue. > you'll have to first say that you think that whites are genetically superior to…

"Did Bush do 9/11? Can jetfuel really melt steel beams? Are other races and genders worse at computer science than me because they are genetically inferior? I'm just asking questions!" said the online poster.

Just because they measured the data, does not imply they were trying to explain it. To explain a result would need a very different experimental setup. Every scientist knows this. It's not a conspiracy if a scientist declines to throw darts at a wall on the cause of something. In fact, they specifically say the cause is likely not explainable by the test differences, which were too small.

"The within-country gender gaps in skills are small enough, however, that they may explain little about gender gaps in CS graduates’ labor market outcomes".

In fact, the poster is not "just asking questions". They have a clear opinion, and ignored the researcher's own statements to the contrary.

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