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Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

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Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#61

Post by sudhirj »

There is a problem, but I'd think twice before calling it collusion or cheating. Here in India the social norms are a little different - when you talk about classmates, groups of friends, teams and gangs, the failures and successes of one are the failures and successes of all.

Some examples:

* I had two friends back in college, making us a gang of three. If two of us did well on a particular subject and the third didn't, we'd get called over to his place by his mum, where she'd beg us to teach him and help him out. Home cooked food was a very common and effective bribe.

* At our first job interview on campus, we told the interviewer that we were all three joining the company, or none of us would. All three of us got in.

* One of us having a girlfriend when the other two didn't meant he was an asshole. Two of us being hitched meant we were obligated to move heaven and earth to help out the third guy.

* Each of us would do one third of the coursework, and we'd coach the others on it and learn the rest. This also applied to individual work - we'd just split it in three parts and share all of it.

* At the final year project / thesis, we did collude. I was freelancing at the time, and I managed to land an interesting project building a case handling / lifecycle system for a client. I put that design forward as my final year project, and listed the other two as my "team members". We all got top marks.

Do I regret this? No, not really. These guys were my friends. People called us the Three Musketeers, and I sure as hell wasn't going to leave either of them behind. And they would have (and did) the same for me. Would we still do it if it was illegal? I don't know. Maybe.

Now, ten years down the line, we've all gone our separate ways. There is still pressure, though. Two of us are married, and if and when we meet the third's parents, we will hang our heads in shame. We didn't help find him a wife.

Odd, but true.

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#62

Post by bm1362 »

octref wrote: post #44
GuiA wrote: post #5

Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures? I distinctly remember my grad school classes, where even by getting 95% I'd be dead last in the class rankings because all the Chinese/Indian students would get 98/99/100% on their assignments. I didn't really care about it, figuring that their studying habits were much more diligent than mine, until one time I arrived in the classroom 45 minutes early and f…

I'm an international student from China, and now I'm TAing a CS intro class in an US university(it's ranked top 30). I found many Chinese students cheating and am not surprised, but what surprised me was that many US students cheated as well. Since I'm from China I know very well the kind of collusion culture : people care their grades too much and make mistakes. However, from what I have heard, US universities have…

I believe this will change once you get out of non-intro CS. My friends and I work for the CS department and we see people whom are not interested in CS or are required to take just the intro course cheat often.

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#63

Post by songgao »

nijk wrote: post #54
songgao wrote: post #49

I've been a TA for Matlab course in my university for three semesters and there are a lot of students cheating in assignments. I thought it would be interesting to see how different submissions are grouped into clustered so I made a visualization page (and a bunch of scripts). Turns out that there are quite a few clusters even the similarity threshold is set to be 90%. https://github.com/songgao/AlikeSubmissions I wo…

Haha: "Students, to pass this class, analyze submissions in MATLAB, and write a report implicating the copiers."

That's a nice idea!

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#64

Post by alok-g »

nijk wrote: post #58
alok-g wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall being in a similar situation. I had done significant marketing/PR for my project and that helped me avoid this issue. Since mine was an original project (a rare phenomenon), it was not very difficult to get the project famous amongst other students and then the professors. The students in the next semester started asking me for the project files to copy it for submission as their own project. I had to be ver…

Wasted opportunity! Open source it, and send everyone a link. Including the professor.

This was a hardware project (IC design) I did back in 1998. Open source hardware was uncommon then, and most of the professors were not even online. Further, open-sourcing this would have meant more students in the upcoming semesters copying the work and submitting it as their own, something which I did not want.

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#65

Post by [deleted] »

sudhirj wrote: post #61

There is a problem, but I'd think twice before calling it collusion or cheating. Here in India the social norms are a little different - when you talk about classmates, groups of friends, teams and gangs, the failures and successes of one are the failures and successes of all. Some examples: * I had two friends back in college, making us a gang of three. If two of us did well on a particular subject and the third did…

[deleted]

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#66

Post by kamaal »

GuiA wrote: post #5

Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures? I distinctly remember my grad school classes, where even by getting 95% I'd be dead last in the class rankings because all the Chinese/Indian students would get 98/99/100% on their assignments. I didn't really care about it, figuring that their studying habits were much more diligent than mine, until one time I arrived in the classroom 45 minutes early and f…

>>Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Generally there exists 0 ways to fight this sort of cheating or corruption or unfair play or whatever you call it. So the net result is people are forced to put up with it. You may ask why it is so difficult to fight it out. Starting at every levels, you just can't as an individual take on a whole a system. You can try, but the end result will be that you will be crushed. You will waste a lot of time, energy and end achieving nothing in the end.

You can't do much against any government employee as they will pretty much have the rights to screw if you want. Grievance redressal is useless and next to non existent. Almost any body here in India can work, especially in Government sectors with total lack of accountability or fear of action regardless of their actions. Same applies to educational institutions and even corporate environments. Corruption and politics is rampant, corporates are only marginally better than government institutes.

You will surprised at toxic high levels of politics and corruption in nearly all corporate sectors which advertise themselves as promised lands of merit based culture. Politics and corruption thereby happens for all sorts of reasons, Language, regional affiliations, caste, culture, color and religion- You name it. Promotions, a work assignment in a foreign country, out of the turn perks, unjustified hikes you name it, and it happens.

I've even lost the count how many times I've seen such things happen in the Indian software companies. Scenes where hardworking people getting screwed, some guy who sleeps on his job getting all the milk and honey just because his manager happens to speak his mother tongue, or belongs to the same state, or his religion, or caste is far too common.

Often there are no ways to fight it. No HR, no body to complain to and pretty much any body you can contact to put you case forward is likely to be your manager's friend.

This is case even in colleges. A lot of hidden gangs exist, teachers generously reward their favorite students.

Almost anybody who cheats almost feels they sort of are entitled to do so.

This case only happens to come out in a place where students found it was unacceptable to cheat.

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#67

Post by hpagey »

rayiner wrote: post #28
GuiA wrote: post #5

Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures? I distinctly remember my grad school classes, where even by getting 95% I'd be dead last in the class rankings because all the Chinese/Indian students would get 98/99/100% on their assignments. I didn't really care about it, figuring that their studying habits were much more diligent than mine, until one time I arrived in the classroom 45 minutes early and f…

> Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures? What do you think is the basis for the pervasive government corruption in asian countries? Do you think it's just a matter of coincidence?

Their is a well known saying in India, Indians steal in Dhoti (traditional indian pants), while westerners steal in suites. Corruption is prevalent in all parts of the world just the type of corruption changes. Wherever, power and money is involved, there is corruption.

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#68

Post by namityadav »

alok-g wrote: post #18

The quality of higher education in India is just bad (I am originally from India) making it more about the degree* than about education itself. Given this, copying assignments is rampant as it is an economically sensible step to getting the degree (without having to also getting the education). A part of the problem is also that the professors themselves are barely good (as such I come from a very reputed engineering…

You do not want to use that term. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient#American_English

Re: Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam?

#70

Post by kamaal »

alok-g wrote: post #18

The quality of higher education in India is just bad (I am originally from India) making it more about the degree* than about education itself. Given this, copying assignments is rampant as it is an economically sensible step to getting the degree (without having to also getting the education). A part of the problem is also that the professors themselves are barely good (as such I come from a very reputed engineering…

The biggest problem is you can't get into any elite institution by doing "Learning the concept thing". There is far too much competition for marks and too many people competing. The only way you can get in, is you have to mug up and memorize everything by heart.

What's worst same thing continues every where.

Do you serious think, companies that come to hire look at how the candidates work, Do they check if the guy is known as somebody who gets the work done? They simply check if the guy knows some algorithms from the books. Or some pointless puzzles, which can be gamed by practicing it for an hour a day.

This sort of thing works at all levels. It even works at some big web giants like Google.

As a society we reward this kind of behavior lot. And then when we get it back, why do we look so surprised?

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