Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!lll-lcc!styx!ptsfa!ihnp4!cuae2!ltuxa!we53!sw013b!dj3b1!killer!elg From: elg@killer.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Resources and education Message-ID: <801@killer.UUCP> Date: Sat, 25-Apr-87 19:48:39 EDT Article-I.D.: killer.801 Posted: Sat Apr 25 19:48:39 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 30-Apr-87 01:38:01 EDT References: <1262@arthur.cs.purdue.edu> Organization: The Unix(tm) Connection, Dallas, Texas Lines: 68 in article <1262@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>, tlh@mordred.cs.purdue.edu (Thomas L. Hausmann) says: > In article <780@killer.UUCP>, elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) writes: >> I'm curious: What do you academicians do when you recieve a program from a >> student that cites Saint Knuth on several important algorithms? Medal of >> Honor? or firing squad? > But when a student has finished my course I like to think that I have given > that student more than a proficiency in Pascal, I like to think that > student has gained some confidence in his/her ability to look at problem > (not just a programming assignment!) and develop a solution. > In short, looking up solutions (in my book) > is not cheating but it is circumventing the purpose of assignments. I think it's impossible to "copy programs out of books" (as Barry Shein puts it). They have to understand the problem, and have at least a LITTLE idea of what the solution is, in order to integrate the information in the book into their program. After all, do you REALLY want your 2nd semester CS students to re-invent sorting, without you telling them about bubble sorts or quicksort? Isn't TELLING them about bubble sorts and quicksort, the same as them looking it up in a book in the library? I don't know about you, but my instructor spent 2 lectures disecting the quicksort algorithm, line by line, and then gave us a programming assignment telling us to devise several ways of choosing a median value, and see how much time kicking in an insertion sort on small partition sizes would save, and print out performance data to see which was more efficient... seems to be the same kind of stuff that anything you can look up in the library would do, is there some magic formula that makes it OK for the instructor to do it, but NOT ok for you to look up a book that does it? Or is it just that instructors are too lazy to think up of assignments where you can't possibly copy from a source without thoroughly understanding the concepts involved? By the way, anybody capable of translating Knuth's MIX algorithms into Pascal, is a better programmer than me :-). And certainly is going to understand the solution VERY well, not just be parroting a solution. About the only thing you're going to get out of Knuth, in most cases, is CONCEPTS. Exactly what the instructor is supposed to be teaching you. Not to mention that, in most cases, Knuth does a complete analysis of time complexity etc... enough to make a 2nd semester CS student say "GOSH! There's more to CS than just programming!". There is also the problem of people who have done the particular type of algorithm before. For example, several programs that I've written have used a hash table to do fast lookups of either integers or identifiers. An instructor assigned me a program where I had to implement several types of hashing & re-hashing, in order to gather some empirical data about which one was the most effective in hashing a certain identifier set (all identifiers in a system program). I'd looked up Knuth after my first attempt at hashing ended up with a very poor distribution (turns out that it was the size of my hash table that was the culprit -- after fixing that, all ended well). Now, comes the hard part: How do I acknowledge that I did NOT invent hashing and that I did, in fact, learn most of the concepts & was much influenced by Knuth and some of the Unix stuff (oops, there I go looking at the sources again)? Particularly, the hash table size, which he asked us to look at and find an optimal size, and write about WHY that size was best? I'm in trouble here, right, since I already know that a prime number is best? Seems that the best solution, in my case, is to keep my mouth shut, because CS instructors have no sympathy for such cases, judging from the three responses to my original bulletin.... students are supposed to be illiterate, and are supposed to do no outside work, and are supposed to learn only what's taught in class, seems to be the message. And when the contrary is true, the message seems to be keep your mouth shut and pretend that you're just another ignorant undergrad.... Eric -- Eric Green elg%usl.CSNET "Just an undergrad" CS student, USL {cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg Haquer, Bayou Telecommunications Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 BBS phone #: 318-984-3854 300/1200 baud Lafayette, LA 70509 Clever quote goes here, but I'm too exhausted.