Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!hybrid!becker!bdb
From: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Request for Comments on Article Found in comp.sys.mac.digest
Message-ID: <4028@becker.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 90 10:32:45 GMT
References: <66437@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Reply-To: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Organization: G. T. S., Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 64

In article <66437@aerospace.AERO.ORG> lubofsky@aerospace.aero.org (Nick Lubofsky) writes:
|Any comments on this hypothesis?  (I'm reserving judgement.)
|[...]
|Date:    Sat, 03 Feb 90 16:59:38 CST
|From:    Graeme Forbes <PL0BALF@vm.tcs.tulane.edu>
|Subject: Writing on Macs vs PCs
|
|Those of you who teach classes where students have to write essays will be
|interested in an article in the January "Academic Computing", "Can the Machine
|Maim the Message?" by Marcia Peoples Halio. Halio is Assistant Director in
|the Writing Program at the University of Delaware. For some semesters she
|taught freshman composition using IBM PCs and then in Spring '87 she taught
|a section using the Mac. I quote her reaction to the first batch of essays:
|"...never before in twelve years of teaching had I seen such a sloppy bunch
|of papers."
|
|The thesis of her article is that the Mac makes for bad writing in a way
|that the PC doesn't. Though students can choose which machine they use
|in the course, she thinks that they all start out with equal writing skills
|(because they all have comparable SATs - is this a good reason?). Yet the
|Mac papers are littered with violations of English grammar, have short para-
|graphs and short sentences resulting in lack of developed or complex thought,
|and are written in the English of the advertising industry (which presumably
|aims for the lcd). She confirmed these impressions by running 20 randomly
|selected essays from both IBM and Mac sections through a VAX text analysis
|program. She also noted a difference in choice of topics: Mac students write
|about fast food, dating, the idiot box etc., PC students write about capital
|punishment, teenage pregnancy, nuclear war.
|
|Why the differences? Various possibilities are suggested. Students tend to get
|sloppy if something is too easy. A command line interface makes you concentrate
|and makes you sensitive to a demand for precision. The Mac seems like a toy
|while sitting down in front of an IBM means serious business (what will happen
|when they all run Windows or PM?). The Mac focuses too much attention on
|appearance and too little on content. And so on.

	This is, to me at least, amazing,
	astounding bullshit.

	The sample size is sadly laughable,
	the assumptions frighteningly bogus.
	Is this the horoscope equivalent of
	the 90's?

	I'm curious to know just how Halio
	dealt with rectifying the problems
	presented by the Mac students' essays.

	"Selected essays"? By what criterion?
	Isn't there a lack of developed thought
	involved in allowing a text analysis
	program to provide one's conclusions
	on what is essentially a set of semantic
	criteria?

	As the dreaded kibo sez, "Disinformation
	is fun", whether intended or not...

Rant,
-- 
  (__)	 Bruce Becker	Toronto, Ont.
w \@@/	 Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu
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_/  \_	 "Hearts of stone, doo-de-wahh, will never break" - The Charms