3 ms·

Misogynist post ahead. You can make yourself feel good by downvoting this. In Poland where I made my CS degree, girls studying CS are very few. As a result, gi

by b0rsuk 9y ago

Misogynist post ahead. You can make yourself feel good by downvoting this. In Poland where I made my CS degree, girls studying CS are very few. As a result, girl students get a lot more (sexually motivated) attention than on other, less technical subjects. Long story short guys were falling over themselves to help girls pass their programming assignment, do their homeworks for them etc. (Some) girls were very happy to take advantage of it. I wouldn't be surprised if they had guys helping them cheat on exams. Supply and demand, plus sexual attraction are a part of the problem.

conanbatt 9y ago
Thats fine, they are likely to receive the same benefits on the jobs as well. Who's to say its not a team building skill??
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  But that way they learn manipulating people instead of programming. The point of a programming assignment or exam is to force people understand programming. If you're hiring programmers you likely want "Masters Degree in IT" to mean "this person can code", not "this person can manipulate people". Good for them, not necessarily good for other people and the company in general. And in my experience romantic or erotic relationships in a workplace is a very bad idea. It's probably this reason that a woman on a ship used to be associated with bad luck - in an all-male crew people are likely to fight for her favor, instead of cooperating. Note I'm not saying women shouldn't perform traditionally male jobs, I'm point out that an unhealthy proportion of men to women can encourage extra cheating.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    learn manipulating people This is called management, and it's well paid.
    - b0rsuk 9y ago
      In that case, they should brag about it: "I never finished any programming assignments, because I managed to make other people do it for me."
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        Im pretty sure they do, just not to the people that can ostracize them for it.
aspec 9y ago
Good insight, that would explain the mechanism propelling a fractionally small minority of cheaters at best.
dgacmu 9y ago
As others have noted, this is unlikely to explain it. I'm a professor at Carnegie Mellon. In the most recent semester, I taught a large undergraduate intro to programming course (CMU 15-112 is similar in audience to CS50 at Harvard. Our cheating ratio - about 10% - was similar this year, and was also higher than normal). The course is taken by almost all first-year students at Carnegie Mellon - it has about a 50/50 gender ratio. Out of curiosity, I examined the stats for our cheating cases - briefly, so I may have made some errors. But males accounted for about 2/3rds of the cheating cases. It's not clear that that is statistically significant, or if it boils down to "about the same." Unlike your hypothesis, this is based upon the actual cheating statistics from a class of about 450 people. :-) Some time over drinks, remind me to tell you the story of the guy who asked his g/f to go get him a snack from the vending machine, stuck a USB drive in her computer, and stole her homework to hand in as his own. Cheating happens across genders and nationalities. We look hard to identify trends, because we try hard to find ways to intervene before the cheating happens. Most cheating comes from poorly-managed stress. A smaller, regrettable subset comes from people who actively seek to cheat their way through something -- but most of it is simply a bad decision under time pressure. The NYT article's hypothesis that people are putting more hopes on CS classes for their future careers rings true to me. We see a lot of people who are (a) not doing very well in the class; and (b) (probably mistakenly) believe they need an A or a B in the class in order to succeed in <thing they want to do>. This creates a stressful situation for them, and some respond in a way that bites them in the long run: they cheat. And, because this is CS and we have MOSS and other tools, they get caught.
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  I'm not pretending to explain why all cheating occurs, or who cheats more. Only what makes the problem worse. In any case I don't know enough woman programmers to make a statistically significant argument. I just described what I encountered while earning my own degree. It could be that those girls just had a cheaty nature and would cheat one way or another. On the other hand, there's a saying "Opportunity makes a thief". It's why during a war looters and marauders become a problem. In other words, some people cheat because an opportunity presents itself. Some horny guys essentially offer to cheat for you, and you have to actively resist.

by b0rsuk 9y ago

conanbatt 9y ago

Thats fine, they are likely to receive the same benefits on the jobs as well. Who's to say its not a team building skill??

b0rsuk 9y ago
But that way they learn manipulating people instead of programming. The point of a programming assignment or exam is to force people understand programming. If you're hiring programmers you likely want "Masters Degree in IT" to mean "this person can code", not "this person can manipulate people". Good for them, not necessarily good for other people and the company in general. And in my experience romantic or erotic relationships in a workplace is a very bad idea. It's probably this reason that a woman on a ship used to be associated with bad luck - in an all-male crew people are likely to fight for her favor, instead of cooperating. Note I'm not saying women shouldn't perform traditionally male jobs, I'm point out that an unhealthy proportion of men to women can encourage extra cheating.
- barrkel 9y ago
  learn manipulating people This is called management, and it's well paid.
  - b0rsuk 9y ago
    In that case, they should brag about it: "I never finished any programming assignments, because I managed to make other people do it for me."
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Im pretty sure they do, just not to the people that can ostracize them for it.

aspec 9y ago

Good insight, that would explain the mechanism propelling a fractionally small minority of cheaters at best.

dgacmu 9y ago

As others have noted, this is unlikely to explain it. I'm a professor at Carnegie Mellon. In the most recent semester, I taught a large undergraduate intro to programming course (CMU 15-112 is similar in audience to CS50 at Harvard. Our cheating ratio - about 10% - was similar this year, and was also higher than normal). The course is taken by almost all first-year students at Carnegie Mellon - it has about a 50/50 gender ratio. Out of curiosity, I examined the stats for our cheating cases - briefly, so I may have made some errors. But males accounted for about 2/3rds of the cheating cases. It's not clear that that is statistically significant, or if it boils down to "about the same." Unlike your hypothesis, this is based upon the actual cheating statistics from a class of about 450 people. :-) Some time over drinks, remind me to tell you the story of the guy who asked his g/f to go get him a snack from the vending machine, stuck a USB drive in her computer, and stole her homework to hand in as his own. Cheating happens across genders and nationalities. We look hard to identify trends, because we try hard to find ways to intervene before the cheating happens. Most cheating comes from poorly-managed stress. A smaller, regrettable subset comes from people who actively seek to cheat their way through something -- but most of it is simply a bad decision under time pressure. The NYT article's hypothesis that people are putting more hopes on CS classes for their future careers rings true to me. We see a lot of people who are (a) not doing very well in the class; and (b) (probably mistakenly) believe they need an A or a B in the class in order to succeed in <thing they want to do>. This creates a stressful situation for them, and some respond in a way that bites them in the long run: they cheat. And, because this is CS and we have MOSS and other tools, they get caught.

b0rsuk 9y ago
I'm not pretending to explain why all cheating occurs, or who cheats more. Only what makes the problem worse. In any case I don't know enough woman programmers to make a statistically significant argument. I just described what I encountered while earning my own degree. It could be that those girls just had a cheaty nature and would cheat one way or another. On the other hand, there's a saying "Opportunity makes a thief". It's why during a war looters and marauders become a problem. In other words, some people cheat because an opportunity presents itself. Some horny guys essentially offer to cheat for you, and you have to actively resist.