41–50 of 216 posts
Appreciate the idea behind the article which may have value, but the data types seem ordinal? 1.0-4.0? is that trying to mirror US GPA system. Normalized based on what? p-values are an archaic only useful for MBAs and Med students.
The numbers were arbitrary. Just what felt easier to understand for the staff.
I really don't want to sound rude, but this sounds like a classic case of correlation not causality, and I could see the consequences really hurting some people. I am REALLY terrible at algebra (to the extent that I am borderline LD in math), and I have completed a degree in CS and hold a steady job as a software engineer. And I am definitely not the only one. Ask a room full of developers how many are bad at math, a…
I don't think it's oop as you suggest - I saw same correlation in a college c++ class. Half the class had easy a's, the rest had really hard c's. I've never seen such a bifurcation in any other college course, usually it's more gradual / continual distribution.
I really don't want to sound rude, but this sounds like a classic case of correlation not causality, and I could see the consequences really hurting some people. I am REALLY terrible at algebra (to the extent that I am borderline LD in math), and I have completed a degree in CS and hold a steady job as a software engineer. And I am definitely not the only one. Ask a room full of developers how many are bad at math, a…
I don't think the author claimed causality. He's interested in prediction, for which correlation is perfectly well-suited. Also, nobody is claiming that the correlation is perfect. You can perfectly well see outliers in his graphs, but outliers don't disprove the correlation.
I really don't want to sound rude, but this sounds like a classic case of correlation not causality, and I could see the consequences really hurting some people. I am REALLY terrible at algebra (to the extent that I am borderline LD in math), and I have completed a degree in CS and hold a steady job as a software engineer. And I am definitely not the only one. Ask a room full of developers how many are bad at math, a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Codeup CEO here: it's the instructors evaluating the students based on their interactions with then and answering the question: how capable is this person of building quality web applications?
That is so subjective that it should be ignored. I've interviewed people who interviewed very well but in practice they failed at basic computer programming concepts and implementations.
Social factors in a workplace also seem to be important and hard to predict. Excellent work for one employer isn't necessarily reproducible for another.
Does a "simple algebra test" correlate with IQ? Does "programming aptitude" (whatever the hell that is meant to be) correlate with IQ? The headline would then follow. I know this is a socially unacceptable opinion but I think those correlations exist.
I don't think such a hypothesis is awkward but I doubt high IQ as an excellent predictor for an individuals performance in tasks that are not IQ tests. As a layman when it comes to psychology I think IQ measures some things but the way the brain works, no real world task a person does is exactly like those IQ tests.
A brain is not a CPU and an IQ is not its clock frequency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read your answer about your methodology of gauging "programming aptitude" and I'm worried it might be susceptible to your judges' biases - it being purely subjective. I'll put more faith in your point number 2 if you come up with a more objective measure.
Agreed that an objective measurement would be ideal and this is second best. However, we've had a hard time creating or locating an objective measurement of general programming skill. As demonstrated by the industry's non-use of standardized tests for programming, I don't think anyone else has either. If you have a lead on something, would love to see it.
This misguided attempt at instrumenting "skill" could prevent highly capable individuals from entering the field who don't have a solid math foundation, for societal or other reasons.
Probably just anecdotal but curious to know what others feel about spatial reasoning? I think specially with object oriented programming it is helpful to be able to visualize all of the 'actors' in your head and how they relate/intertwine.
The scatter plots don't show that strong a correlation. From the test questions, this isn't an "algebra test". It's a word problem decoding test. That's appropriate to programming, where you have to go from an informal specification of the problem to a formal one.
Yes it is algebra. Take second problem for instance. X + (x + 1) + (x+ 2) = 69. Solve for x.
Is that algebra? Is that not algebra? Is that some sort of more nebulous skill that's also correlated with programming? If they actually wanted to correlate ALGEBRA algebra with programming, I also thought they'd have more straight-forward questions. Using word problems brings all sorts of other issues into the picture.
I really don't want to sound rude, but this sounds like a classic case of correlation not causality, and I could see the consequences really hurting some people. I am REALLY terrible at algebra (to the extent that I am borderline LD in math), and I have completed a degree in CS and hold a steady job as a software engineer. And I am definitely not the only one. Ask a room full of developers how many are bad at math, a…
I agree. I think we need to be specific about what's being measured here. Seems it'd be more helpful for backend algorithm development, less critical for front end coding. I don't think it's oop as you suggest - I saw same correlation in a college c++ class. Half the class had easy a's, the rest had really hard c's. I've never seen such a bifurcation in any other college course, usually it's more gradual / continual…