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Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

cmuems.com

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Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#11
post #7

That's just a normal school day at Carnegie Mellon University. :)

She just analyzed the syntax tree of the sentence. Where I'm from, that's a normal school day in middle school. Of course this is a long and convoluted sentence, but the process is not more complicated, it's just longer.

Anything sounds trivial if you start the sentence with '(S)he just ...'. And you say that as though a few dozen bright students didn't fail to accomplish the same task.

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#12
I can't fully parse the first point of the first line, the part in quotes below. I have added parenthesis on the parts that I can parse:

... from "a point halfway between (a point halfway between (the center of the wall) and (the upper left corner)) and (the midpoint of the left side) and (the upper left corner)" to ...

There are 4 points and only two operators, i.e., "a point halfway between". The pseudocode given has used three "halfway between" operators on these four points (on lines 5, 7 and 9). I don't know how that interpretation was arrived at.

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#13
post #11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She just analyzed the syntax tree of the sentence. Where I'm from, that's a normal school day in middle school. Of course this is a long and convoluted sentence, but the process is not more complicated, it's just longer.

Anything sounds trivial if you start the sentence with '(S)he just ...'. And you say that as though a few dozen bright students didn't fail to accomplish the same task.

They failed because the instructions are incorrect and cannot be parsed (assuming, as is reasonable, that they were given the instructions seen in the blog post). It's quite possible that the only student who succeeded did so because she misread the first sentence in just the right way. Note that the assignment has "the first of which is drawn from a point halfway between a point halfway between the center of the wall", while the student's version repeats "halfway between a point" twice, which makes the sentence parseable.

What really surprises me is that nobody reported the mistake to the professor.

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#15
He's really quite shameless and condescending about singling her out for praise and elevating her above all of the other students:

> Melanie Nailed It

> (diagrams showing wrong answers of other students)

> (diagram labeled with "Lewitt" and "Melanie")

> If I were Pace Gallery, I know whom I would hire.

> each of the corners of Lewitt’s quadrilateral was reliably located by about a quarter of the students

> marvelous pseudocode system

> As far as I’m concerned, Melanie has earned the right to title her pseudocode as she did [SOLLEWITTFUCKYOU]. This document is really a gem

> (entire homework answer)

ick ick ick. It's like when a teacher photocopies your essay and hands it out to everybody else in the class as an example of stellar writing, except now it's on the internet.

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#16

I can't fully parse the first point of the first line, the part in quotes below. I have added parenthesis on the parts that I can parse: ... from "a point halfway between (a point halfway between (the center of the wall) and (the upper left corner)) and (the midpoint of the left side) and (the upper left corner)" to ... There are 4 points and only two operators, i.e., "a point halfway between". The pseudocode given h…

The first line is given in the text as: "... first of which is drawn from a point halfway between a point halfway between the center of the wall and the upper left corner and the midpoint of the left side and the upper left corner to a point halfway between the midpoint of the top side and the upper right corner".

Given that the line has a FROM and TO point, we can extract those:

  FROM
    a point halfway between a point halfway between the center of 
    the wall and the upper left corner and the midpoint of the left
    side and the upper left corner
  TO
    a point halfway between the midpoint of the top side and the 
    upper right corner
The "halfway between" in each FROM and TO part must specify two points to be between, so we can extract those:

  FROM
    a point halfway between:
      1. a point halfway between the center of the wall and the upper 
         left corner and the midpoint of the left side
      2. the upper left corner
  TO
    a point halfway between:
      1. the midpoint of the top side
      2. the upper right corner
We do this once again for the nested "halfway between":

  FROM
    a point halfway between:
      1. a point halfway between:
         a. the center of the wall
         b. the upper left corner
         c. the midpoint of the left side
      2. the upper left corner
  TO
    a point halfway between:
      1. the midpoint of the top side
      2. the upper right corner
This results in a nonsensical parsing ("between" can't have three parameters), so we need to backtrack and reconsider other options. This is English and unfortunately the specification isn't precise. The only one that makes sense is therefore:

  FROM
    a point halfway between:
      1. a point halfway between the center of the wall and the upper 
         left corner
      2. [a point halfway between] the midpoint of the left side and 
         the upper left corner
  TO
    a point halfway between:
      1. the midpoint of the top side
      2. the upper right corner
This yields the final definition of the first line:

  FROM
    a point halfway between:
      1. a point halfway between:
         a) the center of the wall 
         b) the upper left corner
      2. a point halfway between:
         a) the midpoint of the left side
         b) the upper left corner
  TO
    a point halfway between:
      1. the midpoint of the top side
      2. the upper right corner
I leave this as an exercise to the reader to parse the English using greedy vs. non-greedy regex statements and see which one results in the correct outcome.

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#17
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything sounds trivial if you start the sentence with '(S)he just ...'. And you say that as though a few dozen bright students didn't fail to accomplish the same task.

They failed because the instructions are incorrect and cannot be parsed (assuming, as is reasonable, that they were given the instructions seen in the blog post). It's quite possible that the only student who succeeded did so because she misread the first sentence in just the right way. Note that the assignment has "the first of which is drawn from a point halfway between a point halfway between the center of the wal…

> What really surprises me is that nobody reported the mistake to the professor.

I think someone else in the class did:

> Michelle has asserted that the statement, as it appears in the Pace catalogue, only makes sense when an additional phrase is added.

Which linked to: http://cmuems.com/2013/a/michelle/08/29/quadrangle/

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#18
post #16

I can't fully parse the first point of the first line, the part in quotes below. I have added parenthesis on the parts that I can parse: ... from "a point halfway between (a point halfway between (the center of the wall) and (the upper left corner)) and (the midpoint of the left side) and (the upper left corner)" to ... There are 4 points and only two operators, i.e., "a point halfway between". The pseudocode given h…

The first line is given in the text as: "... first of which is drawn from a point halfway between a point halfway between the center of the wall and the upper left corner and the midpoint of the left side and the upper left corner to a point halfway between the midpoint of the top side and the upper right corner". Given that the line has a FROM and TO point, we can extract those: FROM a point halfway between a point…

I came to the same conclusion.

Now I'm expecting someone to make a parser/interpreter and a Sol Lewitt image encoding format using the genetic algorythm that turn images into semi transparent polygons :).

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#19
Worth noting that Lewitt had draughters construct his work from instructions, as the students have done in this task.

I've stood in a gallery and followed a different Sol Lewitt location drawing before and it had a similar error - an instruction missing.

I wonder, then, if these are deliberate omissions on the part of Lewitt?

Re: Student Solves Sol Lewitt Drawing Assignment in Pseudocode

#20
post #16

I can't fully parse the first point of the first line, the part in quotes below. I have added parenthesis on the parts that I can parse: ... from "a point halfway between (a point halfway between (the center of the wall) and (the upper left corner)) and (the midpoint of the left side) and (the upper left corner)" to ... There are 4 points and only two operators, i.e., "a point halfway between". The pseudocode given h…

The first line is given in the text as: "... first of which is drawn from a point halfway between a point halfway between the center of the wall and the upper left corner and the midpoint of the left side and the upper left corner to a point halfway between the midpoint of the top side and the upper right corner". Given that the line has a FROM and TO point, we can extract those: FROM a point halfway between a point…

I came to this conclusion at first, but I'm pretty sure it's incorrect (blue in [1]). See Camillo's comment[2] about "a point halfway between" being missing, and yohui's reply. I modified my construction to match, and now it seems right (red).

[1] http://imgur.com/U0sIlNE (based on my own parsing)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6319414

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