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U.S. Students Have Achieved World Domination in Computer Science Skills -- For Now (ieee.org)
When it comes to computer science skills, U.S. students approaching graduation have a significant advantage over their peers in China, India, and Russia. Tekla Perry shares a report: That's the conclusion of a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The study was put together by a global team of researchers led by Prashant Loyalka, an assistant professor at Stanford University. The team constructed a careful sampling mechanism to select senior (typically fourth year) computer science or equivalent students in each of the four countries, making sure that both the educational institutions and students enrolled at those schools were statistically representative of schools and computer science students throughout the respective nations. The sampling also ensured that study participants represented both elite and non-elite universities.
The final selection included 6847 students from the U.S., 678 from China, 364 from India, and 551 from Russia. Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. The exam was translated for the students in China and Russia. When the researchers tabulated the results, the U.S. students came out ahead in every category. U.S. seniors outperformed their peers overall; students from elite U.S. schools outclassed their counterparts at the other countries' elite institutions; and the same was true for students at non-elite universities. (The differences among the scores of students in China, India, and Russia were not statistically significant, the researchers indicated.)
The final selection included 6847 students from the U.S., 678 from China, 364 from India, and 551 from Russia. Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. The exam was translated for the students in China and Russia. When the researchers tabulated the results, the U.S. students came out ahead in every category. U.S. seniors outperformed their peers overall; students from elite U.S. schools outclassed their counterparts at the other countries' elite institutions; and the same was true for students at non-elite universities. (The differences among the scores of students in China, India, and Russia were not statistically significant, the researchers indicated.)
This is really hard to measure
US+China+India+Russia that's a narrow definition of world.
It might be more well-received if there were any aspect of this that wasn't developed by, for, and managed by US institutions. I can already hear "Hackingbear's" desperate whining to convince us this is all propaganda...
3... 2...
If US students have achieved world domination, why are there such a high demand for H1-B Visa's?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Shouldn't they also test how everyone passes Russian, Indian and Chinese tests ?
Because maybe US program is aligned with US tests.
Something tells me a study put together by academics may not match real-world effectiveness. Skills related to teamwork social dynamics, understanding the business domain, and communication often have at least as big an impact as raw academic prowess, especially early in one's career where one has to pretty much shuddup and do what the boss asks.
Table-ized A.I.
There was probably a language and culture barrier in the way of some of the foreign students preventing them doing well, given it was a US designed exam.
So, I'll chalk this one up to forseeing the outcome because of the design of the test. Plus, actual real-world examples of the significant amounts of foreign countries hacking the shit out of the US. Sorry bud, but I think this one was a bit bogus and back-patting.
The team constructed a careful sampling mechanism to select senior (typically fourth year) computer science or equivalent students in each of the four countries, ... The final selection included 6847 students from the U.S., 678 from China, 364 from India, and 551 from Russia.
By the typical fourth year (or equivalent) the US students were still in school while the Chinese students were hacking US companies, the Indian students were answering US help-desk calls and the Russian students were hacking US elections... Be sure to statistically adjust for that.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Part of the reason is "combo matching". Look at a typical IT job ad: it will have a list of "required" skills, tools, and versions that a particular company happened to pick for themselves. The chance of any one individual matching that list as-is is statistically pretty small.
But if HR can shop the world, the chance of a statistical fit goes up. Whether that's a rational way to pick a tech worker or not is moot, it's the way HR/recruiters typically think.
There are other reasons for the popularity of H1B visas in corporations, but combo-matching is one not directly related to salary, culture, ageism, or politics.
Table-ized A.I.
Should be "U.S. Students Have Achieved Domination Over China, Russia and India in Computer Science Skills -- For Now".
Some of us from countries might debate "World Domination"
It's good to be number one in something.
It is not just computer science.
America also won the International Math Olympiad, beating out the Chinese.
Here is a photo of the American team.
The U.S. isn't the most obese nation on the planet. Its not even 10th. Do a quick google search before you start spouting such nonsense.
"the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated"
This sounds like a test the US students may have already encountered in one form or another. Hard to tell but could that be biasing the results?
I mean, not a lot of surprise here when administering tests matching the metrics used for structuring US education.
What convinced the researchers that Russia and China allowed to their best to be tested by americans? It would make sense that they allowed only their inferior posse to be tested, so "the yankee" troupe wins, they get full of themselves and hubris makes them blind while the closely held in secret chinese and russian leet coders hack everything. You see Putin and the Xi are not stupid, evil doesn't mean stupid, it means cunning and that's why they are powerful.
Superficially, this would appear to have a significant degree of bias and I'm left wondering what's the point. For starters it used a test developed in the US as its starting point. It would be expected that students from the US would already be somewhat familiar with the test and associated methodology whereas the other students wouldn't. Also teaching tends to become skewed towards common testing regimes, so it is likely that the material being covered in the US is more relevant to the tests than other countries. I suspect that with a minor tweak to the content of other schools this alleged advantage will disappear.
Also the definition of world is just a tad skewed... why not say the best of 4 countries tested out of 195 countries.
Wow - a "global team of researchers [from] Stanford" found that US students did better on a US test, and it didn't cross their mind that maybe the test was biased towards the US curriculum...
What about testing the knowledge of History majors, "using a careful sampling mechanism to make sure that participants are representative of their respective nations" but administering a standard Chinese test? I have no doubt all US students know when the 4th emperor of the Qing dynasty was born...
For the size of the country though being 2% off the fattest isn't exactly a crowing moment either... "rankings" based on ~data are as useful as the data itself, which is often a decade old or more, & shoddy in many countries.
I don't think you're making as forceful of a point as you may have wanted, although I agree people should read before they spout false statistics like OP did.
Someone should tell "Shanghai" Bill about that.
Some of these US students even know a little maths.
Very little.
Bill got caught lying 12-25 times repeatedly stating "Blood plasma is sterile" and then later that "The Chinese Govt does not directly censor Chinese citizens" and other absolute bullshit head-in-ass retard-level lies. You're not trustworthy.
You are not a source of information that anyone should or even could trust, knowing your dishonest history. Sorry. That's what accountability means when you get caught lying repeatedly, over and over, even after directly corrected.
You're a liar, Bill.
Here's a sample test:
https://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/MFT/pdf/mft_samp_questions_compsci.pdf
Also, it's interesting to note the graph hidden away at the bottom of the article: Computer Science Skills by Gender.
Oblig i think?
Gently reply
Bill, you gotta tell me if this is a joke. If it's real, my math professor wife is going to get a kick out of it.
However, she has said that in the past 2 years, she's seen an improvement in the quality of the non-Asian American students. They seem to be better prepared, but that's just anecdote. I was talking to a high-school teacher who said they're trying to teach math more like other places in the world. For example, instead of making Calculus a semester-long course, with Calc I, II, etc, they're teaching it more simply as a set of tools that you look up when you need them. So, they give it several weeks during other math courses and that's it. A lot of kids get hung up on Calculus and if they could just get through it and move on, they'd be better off.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We're not number one in obesity, nor have we ever been. Nor drug use, for that matter.
I'll assume you're being somewhat flippant with that example. Just because someone is American doesn't mean that they're of European descent, but all you're really saying is that our students of Asian descent are better than China's students of Asian descent. The U.S. has some world-class Olympic sprinters as well, but they're not going to be of Asian descent. As a country we're reasonably good at most things because we've got people from everywhere and people from everywhere want to come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons.
Fact-checking "Shanghai" Bill's assertions yields a decidedly mixed bag. Taking him at his word is no longer viable, he's destroyed any credibility he may have had. He tried to "will" blood plasma to be sterile, rather than accept that it isn't.
He doesn't seem very motivated as a student. He'd rather skip the learning process and go right to spouting pronouncements from his gut. Maybe that's how they do it in "Shanghai" - if he's actually ever been. It's hard to say.
He's a liar hundreds of times over on this site, over the years.
No, it's the 11th. HOWEVER: the top 9 are all tiny Pacific island nations like Samoa or Tonga where they typically get very big, but because of the type of diet they still stay pretty healthy. Have you noticed how many NFL linemen are from Samoa or Tonga or Cook Islands? Guys that look like big fatsos but can do a standing jump onto a table and dunk a basketball and run a 40-yd dash in the 5's.
Here is the list of the most obese nations. You will see that among industrialized nations, United States is first. You could argue that Kuwait is fat because they're all rich royalty and probably just sit and stuff themselves all day. Unlike Americans, who are not rich royalty, and probably just sit and stuff themselves all day.
Here is the list for those of you who really want to deny that the US is very close to the fattest nation on earth.
http://worldpopulationreview.c...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Bill, you gotta tell me if this is a joke. If it's real, my math professor wife is going to get a kick out of it.
I don't know if the photo is legitimate or not. My daughter (half Asian, and very mathematically capable) forwarded it to me.
If a photo is funny enough, does it matter if it is true?
instead of making Calculus a semester-long course, with Calc I, II, etc, they're teaching it more simply as a set of tool
This is much better than the normal "theory first" method. When you start with limits and infinitesimals, the students get confused and lose interest, because they don't see where it is headed. It is also historically inaccurate, because that is NOT how calculus was developed. Both Newton and Leibniz developed calculus as a tool, and the rigorous theory didn't come until a century later.
Most students in a calculus class are going to be scientists and engineers, not mathematicians. They have no need to learn the theory. If they are really interested, they can learn it in a more advanced course, or from self-study.
Mathematicians often make poor math teachers.
Throw out all of the tiny island nations that are in front of us because Pacific Islanders are genetically not built for the kind of diet outside of what they were historically limited to and the U.S. tops the list, or is a close second to Mexico.
The U.S. is a wealthy and prosperous nation, but we've spent too much of that on white powder that's bad for us, whether that's sugar or cocaine, and it's lead to a lot of detrimental effects.
Take it home, bitches! US number 1! Go cry in a corner while jerking off your minuscole limp dicks, you pedo eurotrash!
Fact-checking "Shanghai" Bill's assertions yields a decidedly mixed bag. Taking him at his word is no longer viable, he's destroyed any credibility he may have had. He tried to "will" blood plasma to be sterile, rather than accept it's not.
He doesn't seem very motivated as a student. He'd rather skip the learning process and go right to spouting pronouncements from his gut. Maybe that's how they do it in "Shanghai" - if he's actually ever been. It's hard to say.
He's a liar hundreds of times over on this site, over the years. "The Chinese Communist Party does not directly censor citizens" - etc etc. Ridiculous.
Average students in the USA are just a computer illiterate as students around the world. They know to point-n-click, but don't have much clue about programming or how computers actually work.
The best high school students in the US are fairly rare. The few who are really excellent at coding and testing are the exception. Very few will have other hobbies. Some are probably failing English or other classes like history, govt, sports.
If you only did computer programming 12+ hrs a day, passed the point of obsession, you'd be really good too, assuming you have the interest and aptitude.
The other students also had to learn enough English to understand the different languages.
I was near the top of my programming class in high school. Fortunately, access to computers was limited. I knew only 3 kids with computers at home. We didn't have a computer of any sort beyond a 20-function calculator at home.
But they'll still bring in hundreds of thousands of H1-B workers fresh from the India Certification Farms.
Every single loser in here complaining about H1Bs..... that's exactly what you are.
If you can be replaced by offshore I don't want you at my company anyway.
I've never had an issue finding a job in my specialty in the United States on the east coast and I know for sure on the west coast there's 20x more jobs for the same thing. All of these engineers are being paid more than 100k per year. Absolutely none of these engineers can be offshore because every time someone tries the code we get back is utter trash and ends up costing more from the sheer amount of wasted time going back and forth on requirements with offshore developers that have no idea what they are doing even when they can understand the requirements over the language barriers that exist.
Sorry to break it to you but if your job has been outsourced that's because your skill set sucks and you're a dinosaur.
I can fuck around on /., HackerNews, and Reddit for half the day and I still produce better, cleaner, faster code.
As a Russian-American (born in Crimea) I can tell you that the quality of the code suffers when you have to explain complex technical issues across language barriers. The cost of translating and the back and forth is literally going to cost you more than just paying an American. Half the time you end up wasting an American's hours during the meetings and that by itself already ends up costing the company much more.
Then why do we need all those highly skilled H-1Bs?? If US students are the most skilled in the world, then other countries should be begging for them. America should not be wanting for highly trained computer specialists.
In fact doesn't this undermine the whole H-1B concept?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
...and my Mum says I'm the best looking guy in the whole world!
Most of the gifted real world engineers seem to be doing programming contests than get into theoretical computer science, which is what this test is.
This looks like a biased sample to me - and one not leading to a practical consequence.
These US students have CS degrees, not CS skills.
In order to maximize profits, colleges across the country have been dumbing-down the curriculum so that every idiot who wants a programmer's salary can pass the course. 90% of these kids will exit the industry within one year of graduating.
And its not the kids fault, they spent a fortune to get the skills employers want, and were told "now you have the skills they want." They have no idea what they are in for. The school system failed them, and left them with life-crushing debt, a piece of paper that lies about them, and no actual marketable skills.
The CS dept of my local university is filled with folks on visas. They go to school while also working for a company that sponsored them. It lets the company do an end run around H1-B limits because they're not "work" visas they're "student" visas. The "students" already know the material (they were trained overseas) so they can keep up with a full time job + school.
It kinda sucks. It displaces an American student and a job...
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When outsourcing to India, we learned the hard way. Garbage out - garbage in. There was very little outsourced work that could be done at higher levels of Blooms taxonomy.
France has the most chefs with Michelin stars, so why do new Chinese and kebab restaurants keep opening up?
And so randomly award prominence to one party or another without any seeming rhyme or reason.
What I find interesting in TFA is the difference in skills between males and females in the same country. It's significant, especially in the US. Does this give credence to the pay inequality seen between genders? I know, that comment is not politically correct today, but the data doesn't lie. Right?
They have no need to learn the theory.
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, or teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime?
While I don't derive the fundamental theorem of calculus on a daily basis I do understand it. It feels odd when I'm explaining why the area of a rectangle is width * height; and I suddenly remember I could explain this with calculus as a step function between 0 and width with a constant value of height. I've also used Picards theorem to write a quick and dirty square root function in assembly on a lowly 8086 processor with no co-processing ability, all because I understood the theory.
Loyalka and his colleagues also looked at the difference in scores between the men and women in the sample. In every country, the men came out ahead...
Boundary value problems and initial value problems have plenty of real world applications.
So knowing Picard's Theorem is not an example of focusing on theory.
A better example would be teaching the students how to prove the theorem, rather than teaching them how to use the theorem to solve problems.
Well, I don't think the US can really claim top spot in lying to itself. It is in one of the leading positions though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That's cooked statistics for you. A quick look at the last 20 years of olympiad results shows Russia, China and India consistently outclassing the USA in computing and math.
Kuwait is American. Has been since 1990. I ate at Applebees and stayed at a 5-star Holiday Inn Crown Plaza in Kuwait City. It's exactly what a US state that was majority muslim in the desert would look like. I enjoyed it immensely.
Also, the have a freakin MASSIVE pirate ship park. Like Aircraft Carrier sized pirate ship. Coolest shit EVAR!
You don't say.
How do you measure success?
If you measure it by,
"what country provides the most people who can discover flaws and take advantage of them", +1 Russia / China
"what country provides the most visa exception opportunities to IT/IS skill sets of foreign counties", +1 USA
"what country provides the most chip level execution code", +1 South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan
"what country provides the most electronic manufacturing and board assembly", +1 South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan
I could go on, I'm in this business and I'm not seeing what this post is calling out.
"what county has provided the maximum amount of software variation flood, in the drive to be unique instead of focusing on agreed upon languages until perfection is realized", +1 USA
For instance Google Code Jam". A contest in English, from the US. Between 2003 and 2018, 45 persons won the 1st, 2nd or 3rd place. Among the 45, only 3 are Americans...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I'm not sure what year your photo is supposed to be from, but a photo of the actual U.S. team in the 2018 International Mathematical Olympiad, led by coach Po-Shen Loh, leads one to a similar conclusion.
https://www.cmu.edu/news/stori...
I am an Asian. No idea what his record is, but he is right on this one.
I am a US educated asian. I just choose to not work when I am back home, just because of this. I can't deal with the drama.
Western workplace practices are generally much better.
+10
Typical. Factual information about the US which is not explicitly negative is downvoted. Another post admitting the facts but making a silly and massively skewed narrative to ensure the US looks as terrible as possible with a citation from the third page of google results gets +5 informative.
Intelligent people should use their reason for logic, not rationalization of emotions.
" a significant advantage over their peers in China, India, and Russia" - LOL. What about their peers in Africa?
Oh wait... they haven't got any peers in Africa, because the average IQ in Africa is 70.
Anybody want to shout 'racist' and make the truth go away?
It's fake news. Here is an article with a better photo of the whole team: https://www.cmu.edu/news/stori...
As you can see, the team is more diverse than your image suggests.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They have no need to learn the theory.
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, or teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime?
More like: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, or teach a man to fish and he tells you he has better things to do than dangling lines into water.
Could be a simple case of designing a test to reflect the local curriculum in the USA, or a case of problematic translation.
The test would have a lot more validity if it would have been designed by a joint committee of the universities involved, and then written in their respective native languages (not translated)
Guess our public school system is sucking less under No Child Left Behind.
"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, or teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime?"
True, but I don't need to know how to prove that 2x2=4 to make a lifetime of use of the fact. If I accept that it's a fact and memorize my multiplication tables, I can fish for a lifetime without ever knowing how my rod and reel were made.
Just another day in Paradise
US says US is best!
Russia, China, India is probably saying the same about themselves.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
American universities attract a lot of foreign students. Are we looking at a comparison of CS skills or educational institutions?
I've hired Indians and Americans for some jobs. I always found that the quality of the Indian code was better.
I just doesn't matter how good American programmers are. Corporations and government want cheap and obedient to the exclusion of all else. After all, it's only _your_ data exposed, _your_ life ruined, _your_ time/money squandered, etc by yet another fuckup.
Interesting how you posted exactly the same link as me, but came to exactly the opposite conclusion from it.
The photo shows a racially diverse group. White, south Asian, east Asian... Only one woman though.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
important to note here is as above, these are foreigners, studying in the U.S., not Americans. While Americans are the most xenophobiac and racist people on earth, who cannot stand to be bested by other countries, they are quick to boast when people from other countries achieve great things in the U.S. -- because that means AMERICA did it.
I can fish for a lifetime without ever knowing how my rod and reel were made.
Until the reel breaks and you have use your hands to pull in the line, cutting up your hands. Or until the line breaks and you don't know how to re-thread the line.
And you do know how to prove 2x2=4, you just don't think about it that way. Ie, 2 sets of 2 items = 4 items. Unless you just blindly see every 2x2 and replace it with 4 you do understand the concept.
American students perform better in a test created by American teachers.
I do believe the education is better in the US, but maybe if the test on "what's important" was created by Indian teachers the results could have been different.
You need to get out more often. I can get a new one at about ten different stores in my neighborhood. And when is the "x" going to break?
Just another day in Paradise
Isn't that the point the original article makes, that the U.S. computer science programs are better than the ones in China, India, and Russia? That it is the curriculi, the methods of teaching, and the environments that turn out more capable computer scientists and not the ethnicity of the students.
Seems very odd that the only statistically significant difference was between the native speakers of the test designer's native language and the non-native speakers - China/Russia/India had no significant difference from each other.
Leads me to believe that maybe whoever was translating the test wasn't using the same idioms and figurative language that native speakers of Mandarin/Russian/Hindi would use.
But have a look at https://pcmbtoday.com/ for practice tests for students aspiring to get into top top STEM universities in India. How many in US could make it?
Of course, one could argue that the US system produces more billionaires.
Computer science really is an important part of education these days but I think that a lot of students miss some other important issues like writing for example. Services like kangarooassignmenthelp.com are amazingly popular now because a lot of students don't want to spend their time improving writing skills so they are cheating and I think that such an approach is just completely wrong. Those skills are just as important as computer science.
Great news. I am glad that at least some students can achieve success. I'm not doing so well with my studies. So I have to get professional help and order custom writings service online. Thus, I can maintain good academic performance and solve difficult problems.