Fuddland

Just what the hell is the Laplacian of a monomial? The expression I’ve come up with doesn’t equal the expression I have in a book, and now my expression is somewhere between bewildered and bemused dismay.

If only there was a maths equivalent of RentACoder, from which — believe it or not — some of our Computer Science students have been caught requesting solutions to their coursework. Thankfully one of the coders had some morals and alerted the Department that a few of our students were dirty rotten cheats. I’m not sure what fate awaits them, but I say, if only for the sake of the future employers who might think they’re hiring someone who can actually code: kick ‘em out.

#1

Gordon | 2004 / 05 / 12 – 13:13

Ohhh I love it when that happens (when you are right and a book is wrong NOT when coder students cheat).

Happened to me once a long time ago in a book on HTML. What a shallow life I lead!! ;-)

#2

mrtn | 2004 / 05 / 12 – 13:34

well, not condoning cheating in an academic environment of course ;)

bit trickier when you move the debate on to future employers though. often knowing how to get information you don’t know is just as important as what you already know.

for our standard “interview” for support people, we put people in a room with a list of the hardest questions we could come up with. in the the room is a phone - just in case they haven’t got their mobile - and a pc with an internet browser running. then we leave ‘em for 45 minutes.

anyone who leaves a question blank who hasn’t at least tried googling or phoning a mate for the answer is a definite “we’ll call you…”

#3

Lyle | 2004 / 05 / 12 – 14:55

Now, is there any chance you can repeat the question, in English?

*Grin*

#4

David | 2004 / 05 / 12 – 15:12

Re #2: Presumably there are other measures taken to ensure the candidate hasn’t asked for help with every question, otherwise you may as well hire the mate! ;)

Re #3: Certainly! What’s the explicit formula for the divergence [physically, the rate at which the density exits a given region] of the gradient [the slope, the steepness] of a monomial [a … thingy]? [Okay, lost it a bit at the end there, sorry. :)]

Moral dilemma alert: it occurs to me that, since the investigation into the students concerned is on-going, I shouldn’t really have posted anything about it, even though I’m certain none of the people involved — investigators or culprits — read this site. Do I pull the paragraph or not?

#5

Daisy | 2004 / 05 / 13 – 15:34

I like the sound of Mrtn’s standard interview procedure. I’m assuming that with only 45 minutes in the room you’d have to have a pretty good idea of what you were doing in order to complete the questions, google/phone or not. If you put most of us in a room for 45 days years with one of your papers, we’d have a job understanding the questions, let alone how to answer them.

More importantly, you mistook a frog for a rather large mushroom???

#6

David | 2004 / 05 / 13 – 23:04

Re #5: Yeah, that’s pretty much the point I was making with the first part of #4 — otherwise it’s the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” school of hiring people. ;)

Re #5 “More importantly…”: Not in this entry I didn’t. Actually, not in any entry. :P

I’m seriously considering pulling this entire entry after learning the cheating is more widespread than anyone first imagined. I really don’t want to compromise the investigation, no matter how remote the chances of that are. However, I also think that, in the spirit of the unwritten blogging code of conduct, if I post something, even against my better judgement, it should be left alone. Toughie.

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