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10 Percent of Harvard's Popular 'Introduction To Computer Science' Class Accused of Cheating (thecrimson.com)
theodp writes: The Harvard Crimson reports that more than 60 of the 636 students enrolled in last fall's CS50: "Introduction to Computer Science I" course appeared before the College's Honor Council in a wave of academic dishonesty cases that has stretched the Council to its limits over the past few months. Former students and course staff, though, said course policy was unclear about what constituted cheating, creating the potential for unintentional violations. Consistently, one of the most popular courses at Harvard, CS50 is known for an unconventional atmosphere, complete with flashy promotional videos and corporate-sponsored events.
....being unclear what the definition of be word "is" is.... ....being unaware that running a private email server for govt business is wrong... ....being unable to recall basic information about their activities when subpoenaed... ....thinking that finding a way to bypass the clear interest of congress is a neat idea...
learning how to cheat was just part of the curriculum.
Come on. Zuckerberg copied - and he's a billionaire now.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Of course they won't though, Harvard is already trying to redefine cheating to sweep this under the rug.
This begs the question, if people there need to cheat at an intro computer class, how many of them are cheating for actually difficult classes? 20%? 50%?
If Harvard wants to truly save face, they'll expel these losers. But they won't.
I don't see how a course that encourages collaboration between peers can then turn them in for cheating when they come up with the same answer. You can't collaborate without often coming to the same result using the same methods.
While coding, in its purest form, is a creative act the same is not so of most 'coding 101' problems. They are often rote mechanical pieces, intended to highlight a particular software concept, with little room for creativity (especially if, like any sane student, you're trying for the simplest and shortest solution).
Unless they are monitoring the entire typing history for students, and they only brought students up on charges where their submission was created with a single keystroke (Ctrl+V), I don't see how this is a fair system.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
In my day you wouldn't get into Harvard if you used commas like that.
Not even to look around.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The cheating is partly an indication of just how popular that course has become. (15% of the entire campus was taking the class by 2014, and it became so popular that they actually started teaching the same class at Yale.)
But I just want to say that I took it online back in 2015, and it really is a good class. They start with C, then move on to PHP, SQL, and JavaScript -- all in 10 weeks. I learned a lot, and it gave me a lot of confidence that I could actually learn any language. The course's slogan is "challenging, but definitely doable," and I think that challenge is what makes it such a good course.
I taught myself to program on a Commodore VIC-20 reading magazines. No internet. No BBSes. I slept through my CS101 class and aced it.
In this day and age, if you need to cheat in Intro to CS, you probably shouldn't be in CS.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
They are guaranteed an A no matter what they do.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What's the news here - that only 10% cheated, or that they were accused of it?
In going through Engineering Calculus and Engineering Physics, it became fairly obvious that some of the students were collaborating in team homework sessions, and labs, borrowing text and illustrations from each other. Apparently this is considered normal nowadays.
I'm not saying that working in a group and "hey I'm stuck on 5, this is what I get, what did I do wrong" kind of thing, but more of a "from our twenty people, two each work on 1,11,21,31 and so on, and if we agree, pool the answers and randomize the text you write it down with" and a "here are the six sections of the lab, you four redo this graphic differently for each team and write down this text in a different order" kind of thing.
Sad.
The easy way to tell was many of them would skip the class sections.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If only 10% were caught cheating, that's actually pretty damn good by international standards.
Upwards of 90% of H-1B's from India either outright purchased their diploma, or cheated to pass.
Source: My H-1B co-worker who was very honest in explaining to me why there are so many Indian programmers. He's pissed off because he actually worked for his diploma.
Trump went to Harvard?
From the college where the President who signed the worst healthcare law in the history of the United States, which we're still cleaning up after?
From the college where what?
Are you another one of those loopy conservatards foaming at the mouth so much that you can't think straight to finish your sentences?
Are you trying to say where Obama went to get his law degree? Do we need to bring up Twitler and Wharton? I think we do. I think I just did.
After 50+ years of promises from both Republicans and Democrats to "fix" health care for everyone, and getting nothing in all that time. one could be tempted to say it's the only healthcare law in the history of the United States. I dunno about good or bad, but for 20M people it's more than many of them had to choose from a few years ago. I dare say for most of them, it's good – or better than nothing.
You and your Conservatard friends at Breitbart and Infowars, and Kellyann Clownway's School of Alternative Facts are welcome to clean up this so-called "mess". Just make sure you keep all the promises* your guy Twitler made. He made them, you love him, they gotta be good, amirite? Anything less would be the work of a loser. And hey, BTW, today he praised Australia's PM for having better a healthcare system than we do. I thought you'd like to know. No doubt your guy thinks we should copy them. You don't think he wants us to be second place (((losers))) behind (((Australia))) do you?
Oh. And fix it without giving the 1% even more tax cuts in the process, okay?
* http://www.politico.com/story/...
1) insurance for everyone
2) no cuts to medicaid
3) no one loses coverage
4) a lot less expensive for everyone
5) get rid of artificial lines
6) everyone gets taken care of
I've heard that argument before. The student caught copying someone else's work first denies, then pleads, then goes into "lawyer" mode, trying to argue that what he or she did wasn't really cheating because the syllabus was either badly worded, or didn't specifically say not to do it.
I recently had a situation where a student taking a lab course did not attend several labs, and then tried to turn in lab reports and have the TA grade them. This student was shocked ... shocked ... when told that this was academic misconduct. After all, the syllabus said that data could be shared between lab partners, and the person he got the data from was his partner from one of the few labs he did attend. Furthermore, he argued that the syllabus did not specifically say that lab reports would not be accepted for labs that the student did not attend. I kid you not.
Anyone smart enough to get into Harvard knows exactly when the line between collaboration and plagiarism is being crossed. Unfortunately, some of them also have learned that denial, pleading, "lawyering", and then threats of legal action by their parents are quite often sufficient to avoid the consequences of their actions.
Why are we letting the retarded Cuckerbergs of the world run the show? We can code helixes around them. Any fool can take down Silicon Valley but nobody tries.
I was unemployed 4 months last year. Could not afford healthcare. This tax season thank to Obama, I have to pay a 2k penalty because I was uninsured pastvthe threshold.
This is good? Penalize me because I can't afford it?
Yeah, I had company PPO blue cross always at 600 a month.
Have you seen the shit they offer from the state or fed? I can't see my doctors with it.
I didn't care before and thought it was a great idea. Because I didn't use it. I did not know.
I know now. That faster we dispose of penalties for the poor and shot plans, the better.
I know for a fact all of you that I think Obama care is good has absolutely never had to rely on it and has never been in the situation where you needed to make the decision or get stuck with a very expensive penalty when you need money the most
All very naÃve I can only hope you get put in that situation so you can finally learned like I did
So did Gates
So did Allen
So did Ballmer
etc.
Great artists steal (just not from me).
The school where larval politicians go to pupate.
This is also the august institution where, in 2012, nearly half of students taking 1310 "Introduction to Congress" (~125 students out of 279 in all) were investigated for cheating on the take-home final exam. (The jokes practically write themselves.) "Somewhat more than half" were forced to withdraw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Considering how many students are actually cheating in college now a days, this goes to show Harvard mostly only admits students smart enough to not get caught.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It's an intro class that looks like it's marketed a fun class where you get to hang out with everyone and go to parties... 10% are the ones that have no real interest in the subject matter and are just there because they saw the youtube video of everyone dancing. How is this news? You'll see that in any intro class.
I can only hope you get put in that situation so you can finally learned like I did
What a nice guy you are.
I've been down and out. One "friend" fucked me over for job during the 2001-2002 recession. Even so I didn't wish his dog would die, or that he'd get cancer, or shit like that. (Although I did stop having anything to do with him.)
I bought insurance out of pocket. It wasn't required at the time. I had to dig deep, and it hurt. And I didn't get the subsidies like you can get now.
AFAIK you could have had substantial subsidies. Maybe even free. But it's easier, I guess, to piss and moan about it and blame Obama.
You conservatards are all about being rugged individualists, you don't need help, you don't want hand-outs. But when you fall on hard times we discover you haven't saved, you haven't planned or prepared, and then it's those damn libtards fault. Those guys who saved for a rainy day and wanted a safety net for everyone. Yeah, it's their fault, and you don't want to pay for someone else's safety net. Except you're the one up on the wire without a net.
Yeah, karma is a bitch. A real mean bitch.
coding IS cheating.
cheating time for the most part
After seeing the video with so many smiling faces basically doing cool-looking anything, I cannot even imagine how anyone could cheat. Some of the students didn't accept the terms of the cool site from where they downloaded the cool videos submitted to their assignments? Were some of the smiles in the evaluation provoked by beyond-acceptable amounts of alcohol/drugs? Or perhaps some of them cheated in the tough cool-and-serious-looking-while-holding-a-laptop part by taking forbidden yoga lessons? Poor students! Their daddies might reduce their monthly allowance by over $5000! They might even have to be in the university for another whole semester before the company they want hire them to do the "work" they feel like doing!
Note that I am not anti- rich, spoiled, living-in-a-bubble, etc. people for as long as they accept themselves and don’t unfairly affect others. But what I saw in that video was too much! How can anyone think that all this is appealing and/or related to college-computer-anything at all?
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
You, sir, did not come up with that bubble sort on your own!
Harvard is for the plebs, Trump went to Wharton.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A few months back, Slashdot was united in their agreement that a similar incident of cheating that was exposed in some Indian school was confirmation that Indian education is of low value, Indian degrees meaningless, and Indian programmers lack basic understanding of CS fundamentals.
Interesting to note that the arc of discussion in this case is completely different.
What, we are not willing to consider the possibility that this indicates that a significant % of `US programmers' may lack an understanding of CS fundamentals, which may be the reason why US multinationals like H1Bs?
Savings? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You know who has savings? Not the poor. Not the down and out. These are mutually exclusive.
You say you don't wish it from one side of your mouth and talk shit from the other.
You wrote exactly what I wrote, including blaming the other guy.
Guess what. You have savings. You have a job. Or you would understand savings goes first during hard times. And no. There are income limits to all these subsidies you didn't list. I looked. There are tax breaks I didn't qualify for. Life changed that didn't qualify.
I'm not some child like you. I had almost 200 grand cash savings for a house down payment. I had a car accident. Then 2 years later my neck got worse and worse. I was intermittently working as a contractor. I was going on unemployment or disability (I'm gonna try).
This slowly drained my savings. After 4 years, I had to get a surgery. Being an intermittent contractor, the insurances coverage was spotty. But even before I didn't seem bad enough to get surgery. Even though I had terrible arm pain and throwing up from sitting at the computer programming just 3 hours.
I know I'm your better. Ill tell my story you stupid child.
That's how these things go. You don't wake up one morning without cash. These situations take time over years. You are so stupid.
So the savings which you say I didn't have was gone. It lasted 6 years, supplementing for my lost work. No one will keep a part time programmer that is having health issues full time. Its the perfect storm.
Yes, the tax penalty from Obama care was the least of the expenses. But it was a kick you while you are down regulation.
People that can afford healthcare long term (this is long term in the adult world, not your short term fantasy scenario), will have it. Insurance as an insurance mechanism.
But many many people can not afford it. And it is absolutely not free. That was the lie. If it was why are there fees. And why are there enforcement penalties.
Obama care is a 'make everyone pay for medical coverage' regulation. So it looks like it it national healthcare. But its not.
We could pass a law with the exact same rules for internet. Make people buy internet. Then we have national internet coverage.
But it does not change anything. The people that can't afford it still can not. They are the people who have to pay the penalties. They are they people getting kids vied when they are down.
And by the way, its so obvious you never looked into the networks of doctors. Even if I had paid, I could not see all my PPO network doctors.
You are pretty stupid or a niave child. Or both. Its very clear.
But thanks for your armchair analysis of my situation with no facts. I know I had much much more than you. If you were at that level, you would know not to talk simplistic trash of 'not prepared so you deserve it'. Silly child's mind.
Given the opportunity, everyone will cheat. College is nothing more than a 4 year long beer party of booze and sex.
That's a pretty low number for an Ivy league school.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I go to the University of Buffalo in NY (and I will use their name) and as an Electrical Engineer *I* got in trouble when I filed an ethics complaint when graduate students were cheating on a midterm when the only TA walked out, and the department (who all knew it happened) didn't do anything. Worse than 10%, more than HALF of our class was cheating in a digital logic class, and of course they weren't punished. This wasn't like "build an adder using transistors" it was "find a logic circuit for this three-input 1-output truth table" after we learned techniques for it. Labs were the same thing, students copying labs or just lying about values. When the TAs find the students do copy labs, they just shrug it off and give them -10. Note: minus 10 could also happen because you failed to record a value from a q-point. Worst was last week someone flat-out submitted an assignment that wasn't theirs, AND DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THEIR NAME ON IT AND GOT A 92. Higher education is more corrupt than politics.
In the second week of my freshman year, 1960, I had an emergency appendicitis operation. The TOTAL bill (doctor, hospital and medicine) was $750.50, and BlueCross & BlueShield paid it all. The premiums were paid by the company where I had worked. The insurance companies competed to get the company's business.
Then Nixon listened to Halderman about Kaiser's HMO's and got government into healthcare, to "save the people money". Costs have been rising and coverage falling every since. The insurance companies stopped competing and started colluding on price. They also stopped using standard mortality tables and began dividing the population up into groups based on age and previous health.
Today an appendectomy will cost about $10K and the patient would pay anywhere between $100 copay to 50% of the total cost. Obamacare has pretty much set the premiums for a family of four living on $48K/yr at $1,200/mo or $14K/yr. The ACA amounts to a tax on employment. It penalizes those who work and funds those who become dependent on the government. Backdoor socialism, which was its main goal. The ACA will cost $2 TRILLION dollars over the next ten years. For that money we could have put a free clinic in every town in America.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
You had a car accident, lost your awesome well paid job and had to blow away your savings because health care where you are is stupidly expensive. Then it's Obama's fault for trying to fix a broken system.
You got what you deserved jackass.
I just can't imagine...
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/20/128224/95-engineers-in-india-unfit-for-software-development-jobs-report
http://www.gadgetsnow.com/jobs/95-engineers-in-india-unfit-for-software-development-jobs-claims-report/articleshow/58278224.cms