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China Dominates In NSA-Backed Coding Contest
The Narrative Fallacy writes "With about 4,200 people participating in a US National Security Agency-supported international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components, 20 of the 70 finalists were from China, 10 from Russia, and 2 from the US. China's showing in the finals was helped by its large number of entrants, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers was a finalist. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; Poland, 214; Egypt, 145; and Ukraine, 128. Participants in the TopCoder Open was open to anyone, from student to professional; the contest proceeded through rounds of elimination that finished this month in Las Vegas. Rob Hughes, president and COO of TopCoder, says the strong finish by programmers from China, Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere is indicative of the importance those countries put on mathematics and science education. 'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'"
Apparently I was born on the wrong continent.
Given the percentage of Chinese coders in comparison to US, they still did roughly twice as good. (Cue the math pedants)
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'
Thats nice, and I believe it's disgusting how athletics are held here, but the public has made it abundantly clear that's they way they want it. I, for one, would like to welcome our new Chinese overlords.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Maybe programmers in China, Russia, and Eastern Europe have more time on their hands, less money, and would derive more benefit from participating in the contest (prestige and recognition for instance). I'm sure there are a great many US coders who would do very well in this contest, but are too busy.
Which reminds me -- how is the USA doing in the World Cup?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
What's that?
'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'
So long as the next war is fought with rubber balls on a carefully leveled surface, the US will do fine.
Who knew that teaching kids that 1+1 can equal 3 as long as they feel good about themselves would turn out bad for us...
Given that your willing to write off the population of an entire country on your limited anecdotal evidence, I have to wonder whether the people outsourcing the role knew they'd get incompetents, but at least the new incompetents would be cheaper.
Reminds me of an episode of Sliders where they treated the people who are good at math/science like athletic gods.
Anywho, I was just at a university graduation a couple weeks ago, and I swear there were about 150 graduates for Social Services and Psychology, and seven engineers/computer scientists/math majors graduating. Of course we're going to get our asses handed to us when we just aren't pushing those sort of programs here in the States.
Turn your back on learning and embrace anti-intellectualism? Enjoy falling behind.
Unfortunately America is getting screwed from both sides... the Republicans actively oppose education that isn't Jesus-centered, while the Democrats and their "Oh, everyone's a winner" crap make what education we do have a joke and create a disgusting sense of entitlement. I figure once China launches a manned moon mission it'll probably be the kick in the ass America needs to get back in gear, same as when the USSR launched Sputnik. Right now America's stalled but there's still time to reignite the engines.
Most nations don't have long once they stagnate, but America's got a hell of a lot of inertia behind it... I hope we don't throw the chance away.
Oh really? What fraction of A-rod's salary is the top coder in China being paid?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
It's time for nerds to rise up yet again. Throughout modern history in the US, celebration of the nerd has resulted in unprecedented economic prosperity and global economic domination.
From the idolization of Einstein, Feynman, and other physicists, arose the economic superpower that dominated much of the world in the 1950s and 60s.
In the 80s, we were captivated by the message of Revenge of the Nerds, and on the shoulders of this movie we came to dominate the new era of Information.
Ladies, gentlemen: Now is the time. Now is the time to rise up from our comfy chairs, to rise up from our futons, to rise up from the depths of our basements! We must rise up as one united voice of nerd-dom, and speak to the mouthbreathers who have ground us beneath their bootheels since time immemorial. We must tell them:
ENOUGH! Take your stupid sports and shove them. Take your stupid pop music TV shows and shove them. Take your idolization of stupidity and sacrifice it on the altar of curiosity, the altar of edification, and the altar of neckbeards and cheetos!
WE MUST DEFEAT THE...
What's that mom? Yeah... OK... I'll be up for dinner as soon as I finish this level. Did you get some Mountain Dew?
Sorry, gotta go AFK.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
IMHO it's not that we (yeah, I'm from so called "Eastern Europe") focus on mathematics and hard science, it's just that, from what I see, athletes/etc. are put on a smaller pedestal
(perhaps partly because of economic considerations...celebrities here simply aren't worth that much as a product; means also that for larger percentage of "would-be celebrities" the only future is as a bouncer or whore, etc.)
But they are still put on a pedestal...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Outline one method to gain access to NSA networks and provide code implementing the method. Bonus points for commented code.
Begin.
Hah, I recall phoning Hewlett Packard's tech support line some years ago... After tediously explaining my problem to the indian bloke on the other end, he said "I'm sorry, I do not know very much about computers"
Apparently, HP's buzzword for outsourcing is 'innovation'.
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
Several of the Indians I work with are among the most talented, knowledgeable architects I've ever met.
What's your point?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Saying 'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.' is trying to put it all on a somewhat equal footing - "well, they're good at math, but we're as good at sports as they are at math!" Given that the Olympics were just a few months ago, it seems they also do the same thing with athletics as we do with athletics, but they also treat math and science with that highly competitive regard as well. It's all about competition, and we just don't treat math and science as competitively as we treat sports. Just look at what happens when we do treat education competitively - we get spelling bees with 5th and 6th graders who can out-spell 99% of English speakers of any age.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I often find that the applications coming from China and India to be poor. They are often ugly and hard to use.
I think we need to differentiate between being able to write an Algorithm and being able to produce something like ITunes.
Part of this is actually having talented designers and people who can come up with good specifications and use cases and everything else that goes into it.
These code tests rarely talk about coming up with a good application architecture or good design. Sure we need people writing device drivers, but we also need the higher level tasks done as well. I don't think they are represented well.
I often try the Google code challenge only to feel bored. I guess I don't really like solving "shortest path" type problems. I'm more about creating a data model, interface, and ultimately a tool with a good user expeirence. Something that solves a day to day task.
Maybe we should have application challenges where we say "write the easiest to use calculator" :)
At one of the major youth mathematics competitions, Tournament of Towns, the award ceremony is 80% Chinese, 80% of the non-Chinese are Russian, and 80% of the remainder are Indian. It seems like a general pattern around here - look at any math competition top score list and you see Chinese names at the top.
You might be onto something here. My typical experience with Indian programmers is that I just cannot make them to take up any project outside of work no matter how much I suggest it would be a good idea and for most of them 100% of their experience comes from past work projects. Extracurricular activities seem to not be very popular in India from my experience. On the other hand, if I talk with my Easter European friends, more than 50% of their experience will come from projects done outside of work. So they would be more likely to replace some of that extracurricular activity with participation in a contest like this. I cannot say about the Chinese, never had much experience with them though.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
... fix Slashdot's stylesheets. Seriously, WTF? First it was invisible titles on comments, now it's floating blocks.
Economic freedom based on what? Not questioning your logic, just wondering where those numbers are coming from.
It could just be that the US coders are no longer interested.
I used to compete in Topcoder. I made it to #2, I was in the top ten for over a year solid. Then I got a job at Google thanks to my Topcoder ranking. I joined a team that had a bunch of other ex-Topcoders in it and, as with them, determined pretty quickly that Topcoder just wasn't worth my time anymore.
Now, I don't know how many Chinese programmers got jobs through Topcoder, but I do know that the vast majority of the best Topcoder competitors in the US were hired by a surprisingly small set of companies. And, well, as cool as Topcoder is, if you sit down and look at dollars-per-hour . . . it's pretty crummy compared to a real job. Especially since they lowered all the prizes.
So, US coders do Topcoder, do well, get job, quit Topcoder because we get paid well. Chinese coders do Topcoder, do well, don't get job, don't quit Topcoder. Or they do Topcoder, do well, get job, don't quit Topcoder because they're not yet being paid well enough.
Doesn't surprise me in the least.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
... steroids and "performance enhancing" supplements. So by that line of logic, mathematics education outside of America = Lots of meth and piracetium?
Caffeine and artificial cheese flavoring.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I think it is like the Superbowl, but instead of playing a sport they kick around a little ball and occasionally fall to the ground and roll around pretending they were shot.
Nope. Your higher level of education is pretty bad too.
Where I live only one thing matters in where you get to study: How good your high school grades are. If you did well in high school, you'll get to study where ever and what ever you want.
In USA the education costs. It means that many potentially very smart people can't afford to get into or finish their universities. That leaves room for people with money, contacts, etc. to take the place that would otherwise have gone to the most competent people.
I am aware there are stipend programs and such that try to ease the problem but they won't fix it.
A place in which the most competent get to study produces better results than place in which some mixture of the most competent and wealthy get to study. It's a design flaw. In addition, institution that has purpose of making profit will sacrifice some quality if they deem it more profitable in the long term. And in some cases it is.
Technically you could argue that while our system produces better students, your system produces better teachers (more competition between schools and such). While that argument would hardly hold (we have competent teachers here, there can be and is a lot competition even between government funded schools) I have some second hand knowledge that it doesn't work in practice either.
My brother studied abroad in the USA when he was in high school. Three of my friends (two of which study CS and the last one studies industrial management) have studied in different (and pretty "average" as far as I have understood) universities the USA and all four have said the same. It is much easier to get good grades there. People who have been somewhat average students here become top of their class in most subjects...
Honestly, the level of education that USA offers isn't really known for being excellent on worldwide standards. I am aware there are some really good universities too and am confident that MIT or Berkley would be better than where I study now. But saying that your higher education system rocks the world is just plain wrong.
20 of the 70 finalists were from China, 10 from Russia, and 2 from the US. China's showing in the finals was helped by its large number of entrants, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers was a finalist. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234
So let's calculate proportional representation then (since it would make more sense as a comparison point):
Russia: 380/10 = 1 finalist per 38 participants
China: 894/20 = 1 finalist per 45 participants
USA: 234/2 = 1 finalist per 117 participants
So, out of three, Russia seems to top the list. It's a pity they don't give the numbers for finalists from other countries - I would be curious to see how other Eastern European countries fared, and I have a strong suspicion that, if those numbers were included, top 3 would be entirely Eastern Europe.
Certainly plausible. There's also the "give a shit" factor. As in, "Do I give a shit about this that I'd bother to enter?" What's the payback for this? If it isn't immediate, towering fame, I can see a lot of talented might give contests like this a pass.
It also doesn't reflect on the _quality_ of the winning entries. Yeah, maybe X number of Chinese won, but was their work that good compared to standard practice, or some other objective criteria? It's like they say: Even if you take first in Special Olympics, you're still a retard. (Apologies to all actual mentally handicapped folks and their supporters; I had more than one brother who was, in fact, retarded, and they were the coolest guys I knew.)
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
I think that teachers are a significant part of the problem (somewhere after parents).
The teacher's unions have for many years rejected almost all attempts to reward the objectively successful (rather than the most senior and/or most willing to collect various paper credentials) practitioners of the art while pushing out those that are not successful. They are historically opposed to all standardized student testing - esp. if they are fearful that these results may be used in teacher evaluation. If students testing at the X percentile on a standardized Algebra test at the end of Algebra I end up at the end of Geometry testing at 1.1X in one teacher's class and at 0.9X in another teacher's class in the next classroom, it seems we have a pretty good hint which teacher is better.
The standardized testing should be a significant factor in students' grades to discourage students from "punishing" a teacher they don't like by doing poorly on the standardized tests.
I don't find the arguments about how "teaching to tests" is bad very compelling - esp. in Math and Science. If "teaching to the tests" results in different teaching than "teaching to excel in the material", obviously the tests need to be fixed -- they are testing for something other than that which competence is desired in. Sure, there are some subject areas that don't lend themselves to standardized testing (for example, various performing arts), but these don't seem to be the areas that are resulting in American High School graduates being non-competitive.
Annecdotally, in my personal experience most smart and competent people who flee from the teaching field (usually after having entered it somewhat idealistically) would be excellent teachers but end up being frustrated by not being rewarded for their performance, frustrated by lack of support from parents ("My little Susie would never talk back"), and lack of support from administrators ("If there's a problem with classroom discipline it must be the teacher's problem as Susie's mother has assured me she's an angel").
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Something for the reading list. The Essential Sternberg:Essays on Intelligence, Psychology, and Education
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"