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bxh

I find the use of examinations and tests to assess the "quality" of the student non-ideal.

It's very possible to perform very well on tests with minimal actual comprehension of the material through memorization. In fact, it's quite possibly easier to memorize solutions than to actually learn to solve them.

Re:Optimal boarding method for airline passengers on Sunday February 28, 2016 @04:14AM (#11190415)
Simulation videos of different boarding methods from a few years back: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDlKAojWte0JQRABHbJmYg

I fly frequently, and most of the time, the airlines still choose to board the passengers back to front..

Re:Ask HN: What comes first: the idea or the skill? on Thursday February 18, 2016 @12:19AM (#11123875)
I've seen many instances of people coming up with great ideas, then subsequently developing the technical skill necessary to implement them.

On the other hand, being highly skilled in a field allows one to see opportunities (e.g. market gaps) or come across cutting edge technology that could be used to solve age-old problems.

I just started getting into proper Android development, and found it extremely difficult to structure my code when using a whole bunch of interfaces to communicate between dynamically generated fragments. Hopefully this will help!
Re:If you own a website, I want to make you more money on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @05:21AM (#11018608)
This is a fantastic idea! After this manual process of recognizing and highlighting the object, you'd have a really great dataset to train machine learning algorithms on!
Re:The Illusion of Competence on Monday February 01, 2016 @11:45PM (#11017677)
This article perfectly describes how it is to watch many sports. I find it even more evident with highly technical sports like badminton, where top players like Lin Dan appear to casually walk around the court when in fact the training required to achieve that level of efficiency, speed, decisiveness and reflex is probably quite unfathomable.
Re:Inside the Volkswagen emissions cheating on Monday February 01, 2016 @12:43PM (#11013460)
The line about how the engineers view the tests as an optimization problem really resonates with me. When the results of tests administered in an artificial setting becomes the primary method of assessment, such a trend will inevitably emerge.

Take school examinations for example, in highly competitive environments where test scores alone are the major determining factor, students begin to consider the benefits of forgoing comprehension of the material for rote learning.

Re:Why Learn to Program in C? on Monday February 01, 2016 @12:32PM (#11013357)
I agree. Furthermore, I think pointers in C is a simple concept that becomes incredibly powerful, and also gives a lot of insight into how memory works and the different data structures.
Re:Why Learn to Program in C? on Monday February 01, 2016 @12:24PM (#11013286)
What language would you suggest is friendlier, and less rife with gotchas? I find the rules of C fairly reasonable, at least on the surface.