Test one

Let's start with a shout-out to B over at CSC148H Slog. Well, a few weeks ago I reviewed his slog. To recap, I said I liked what he what trying to do, but it seemed that he was letting the un-fun TA and the echoing silence get him down; this resulted in his posts ceasing to have interesting analogies, instead becoming shorter and shorter. Somehow he seems to have found me (good on you!) and, further, he seems to have taken my advice!

He wrote a longer post, sure. But it's the content that matters. He carried out an interesting example; not much philosophizing that week, but I'll deal. More importantly, he's put out some general statements, something which he had neglected to do previously. He talked about slogs, saying he appreciates seeing slogs with "ideas that we don't encounter in class", saying he has come to "value CSC148H's slogging community"(!), and he actively solicited comments.

And he told me I was being supportive. And then he made this reply to the TA. Wow. I feel good now. I mean, it's nice to know that, when you reach out, you can actually touch someone. This literally made my day. Thank you, brave soul!



OK, I've got a few words to say on the first term test. First of all, it was fairly easy (this is not just subjective -- the average was indeed high). To be perfectly honest, I guessed this would happen.

Second, the cheat aid sheet was not useful. To be honest, I also guessed this would happen. I mean, I did write the thing. I just didn't find I had to refer to it. I asked a few others, and this seemed to be generally the case (if you know of someone who found theirs particularly useful, I'd like to hear why). The majority of my sheet was taken up by examples of how to use unittest, which of course didn't come up at all. Man, unittest is annoying.

I found it interesting that there were four different versions of the test; mainly, surprised that this just never seems to happen elsewhere (when I hear that there are different versions of a test, it without fail means that the multiple choice questions are asked in a different order). Then again, maybe this was necessary, given the lack of space in the room, so that attempting to cheat would be unhelpful. Anyways, the professor (Heap) mentioned that he would magically adjust the marks so that each version had the same average. Liking stats, I asked him about this. He seemed, um, rather cynical when I asked this, his eyes shifting as he asked whether this was a complaint. He told me that the variance was very low, particularly for the first question (on tracing a recursive function -- the low variance is probably due to particularly high marks overall on the question, but that's just my conjecture). That's not much to go on. But there you go, I guess that's how the course works. If I were a prof, I would totally make this kind of information publicly available, and I would be excited to find that [a] student cares about it.


Random slogs of the week!  (explanation here)

C - Average. Probably not worth looking at, unless you want to read all of the slogs.
B - Above Average. One or two neat things. Maybe try it  if you're looking for content on those particular topics.
A - Excellent. Lots on interesting ideas that aren't easy to find elsewhere. Probably worth visiting; I'd expect to find more interesting content here in the future.
D - Below Average. Not reader-friendly. Maybe take a look to make sure you're not making the same mistakes.
F - Fail. Fatally flawed; for example, not having any content. I hope I don't find any of these.

CSC148 SLOG Winter 2014 by Elizabeth

• Pretty! The text seems carefully groomed.
• The posts are short, which is more because the author doesn't ramble than anything.
• The tone is cheery and rather a pleasure to read.
• She talks about stuff that's strictly course content... for a sentence or two, and then provides her own angles on it. That, I think, is exactly what they expect us to do (why have so few people been doing it??)
• Rating: B+   Solid, but not outstanding; I feel like there's some unreached potential here, that maybe the next post would be even better. I think i'm going to check back, just in case.

CSC148 by Erica M.

• Very much a diary. Normally, I shrug off this stuff as checklisting -- but she's so thorough! Also, she does give her opinions, so she is technically following the slog guidelines.
• There's a font change halfway down the page. I can understand why, the first font is really awful. Personally, I'd recommend changing those retroactively.
• Rating: B-   I suppose that if you don't have a basic understanding of the core course concepts, this might actually be a good place to dive in. It really is thorough.

csc148 SLOG by Labiba Chowdhury

• Lots of reflection going on here.
• But not much posting.
• Grade: D   The only post was okay at best.

CSC148 SLOG by Ramsey

• Lots of well-documented confusion and complaints. 
• Unfortunately few notes of resolution.
• Raises a few interesting questions (leaving them open)
• Short posts usually neither good nor bad, but here, definitely an asset.
• A hidden reference or two (or maybe a ton, that I'm missing)
• The author dislikes unittest, too =p
• I like the formatting.
• Rating: B   It's a light read, so no harm in trying it.

Shuqiao Wang's SLOG

• Reads like lecture notes.
• Tiny font :(
• Only one post :( :(
• Rating: D   Not much to say here.

Well, that's all for today. I've finally exhausted my backlog of topics to write about, and I'm looking for more. 

O mysterious readers, please comment, lest I be forced to shout alone into the void. <3

Or you could slog about me. That's cool, too... =p

--David