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from the does-it-count-as-a-foreign-language dept.
Mark Guzdial at ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) writes:
I have three reasons for thinking that learning CS is different than learning other STEM disciplines.
- Our infrastructure for teaching CS is younger, smaller, and weaker;
- We don't realize how hard learning to program is;
- CS is so valuable that it changes the affective components of learning.
The author makes compelling arguments to support the claims, ending with:
We are increasingly finding that the emotional component of learning computing (e.g., motivation, feeling of belonging, self-efficacy) is among the most critical variables. When you put more and more students in a high-pressure, competitive setting, and some of whom feel "like" the teacher and some don't, you get emotional complexity that is unlike any other STEM discipline. Not mathematics, any of the sciences, or any of the engineering disciplines are facing growing numbers of majors and non-majors at the same time. That makes learning CS different and harder.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday January 11 2018, @08:34PM (5 children)
Hate to be condescending, but you mustn't know many wealthy people. I've known a few, both domestic (Australian) and from elsewhere (UAE, China, Singapore, Saudi etc...). The ones that have family businesses eg. grocery store chains, multi-ranch cattle companies, construction companies, cotton growers (didn't know there was that much money in cotton) etc... seem to be the most motivated, and either have some intelligence or have been made aware of their own lack of intelligence (often by the previous generation) to the extent that they know they need trustworthy competent people around them. These people need some attachment to reality because they aren't THAT wealthy in the scheme of things. I have also known literal "trust fund babies" who can't waste cash fast enough to stop accumulating. And they can waste a lot of money - there seems to be a culture of "keeping up appearances" with some. Anecdote : before 9/11 a Sri Lankan friend (who wanted "in" to the wealthy crowd) went on a shopping expedition around Australia with a Saudi (who I wasn't allowed to meet as a friend because I was too "western"). In the Sri Lankan guys haul he had bought the most expensive pair of nikes he could find, and the Saudi payed him double so he could burn them (apparently because he found them religiously offensive. A secondary reason was to signal to the Sri Lankan guy his "wealth" was insignificant, which, although he was wealthy enough not to have to work, was comparatively true). These trust fund babies are often of below average intelligence : I've even known one who was literally retarded, and another with schitzophrenic delusions - they're the definition of pointless waste, have many "friends" helping them to spend their money, and they were STILL accumulating because they couldn't spend their trust fund stipends fast enough. Those with some intelligence are often so unmotivated and depressed that it's strangely sad - wealth seems to be somewhat isolating, at least for some. I know a Chinese woman who is depressed, and buys realestate to pep herself up. She doesn't rent the property because that's too much hassle, and she has so much cash (her portfoliio is managed and she doesn't know or care where her cash comes from) that she can buy properties outright on a whim.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 12 2018, @07:25AM (4 children)
In other words, you don't know many rich people. Back at you.
They're still wasting the trust fund. And probably heavily limited in how much access they have to said fund, meaning they're not that rich. Finally, we just have your uninformed hearsay as to what sort of damage they're doing to the trust fund.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday January 12 2018, @09:54AM (3 children)
*sigh* My mothers partner was a tax lawyer. He created trust funds, tax minimisation schemes, assisted in "succession planning" ie. passing business assets to the next generation etc... The intellectually disabled guy and the schitzophrenic I mentioned WERE limited in that their funds grew despite allocations to their drawings accounts, but that's standard practice for large trust funds. Perhaps you're referring to power of attourney issues or something ie. they don't have the power to liquidate their funds?
I did think of a name I could drop - someone a US person might know, but I forgot his name as I only met him once. He was an Australian rodeo rider who became #1 in the US, and wanted to repatriate funds to Australia in a tax efficient manner.
You're right in that it's dangerous to have that much money though. A brother and sister (Indians - friends of mine from university) were shot with a single crossbow bolt... the sister hid behind her brother in a confrontation with someone known to them who'd been sneaking their plastic and spending enough money for even them to notice.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:36AM (2 children)
Thought so. Hearsay isn't a better foundation than knowing a few rich people is. FWIW, I have experienced directly the effect I speak of in an experimental market (Foresight Exchange [ideosphere.com], I'm currently first place on that list and have been at least third place on that list since a few months after its creation in 1996). That market had three features which exaggerated the effect of greater wealth resulting in lower yields. First, playing field was very level, it's nearly zero sum, and number of market participants was relatively low. I noticed that it grew steadily more difficult to find credible investments. For example, I had to shift from market making and short term opportunity buys to long term investments (time frame 5-15 years), because my wealth had increased greatly (almost a factor of ten increase in net wealth).
Sure, real world markets are different. They are larger with extremely rich people having some ability to manipulate the rules of the markets and society to their advantage, but you still have the problem that it's far easier to find good investments of a given high yield at $1 million than it is at $10 billion. And you don't have to involve large numbers of people or bribe a bunch of politicians in your schemes for the smaller amount.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:38AM (1 child)
So what you're saying the size of the world economy (or the part thereof one limits themselves to) is an upper constraint on wealth? That's both obvious, and isn't an argument against the fact that wealth disparities (when unconstrained) lead to an ever increasing share of the economy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:59AM
I'm saying a lot more than just that.
It is however an argument against the claim that such wealth disparities can be exponentially increasing.