19 ms·

Female, minority students took AP computer science in record numbers

90 points by MilnerRoute 8y ago

tropo 8y ago
This is a half-truth, because there isn't really an AP Computer Science anymore. From wikipedia: "Due to low numbers of students taking the exam, AP Computer Science AB was discontinued following the May 2009 exam administration." Today's offering is, at best, some light familiarity with Java. That one is called "AP Computer Science A". There is even a wholly useless "AP Computer Science Principles" that involves writing small essays about non-technical aspects of computing.
- iopuy 8y ago
  Wow, that sounds like a failure of teaching to me. The exam switched from C++ to Java in roughly 2004 and then it is discontinued in 2009? Perhaps a change to the teaching methods could have been implemented before cancellation. Although I took the case via distance learning and I'm not sure that would have had any effect for someone like me.
  - chrisabrams 8y ago
    I was a part of the first class that changed the AP test from C++ to Java. Our CS teacher had state winning teams for C++ and none of us passed the Java test :/ The communication and process for switching the test was handled poorly to say the least. It was pretty hard spending years looking forward to high school CS to learn C++ and then be denied that. To this day I’ve used Java for absolutely nothing but I do plenty of native compilation for JS/Python -> C/C++.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Makes sense why more people are enrolled if they lowered the complexity but basically kept the name.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    I don't know who is behind this sort of thing but I watched it happens to IT growing up. System administration and working with the low levels of operation systems (not programming so much, things like bash, cmd, and all the low level stuff you can do before you get to programming) was something that actually took some skill. If I recall a of our operating systems came out of people who were more classified as system administrators. Anyways my local school offered a associates in Unix Operating systems. The teacher was amazing, probably one of the best I had, but his class got canned for some shitty windows bullshit because the students complained so much about it being to hard. Yeah the class had rigor, but the problem really was 2 fold. Students did not want to really learn the stuff and mostly lacked a good foundation in computers at all. So they struggled on simple things like pipes and redirects. I also remember they were pushing IT related classes very hard. You could not go anywhere on campus without some poster saying how much money you would make if you got a career in IT information systems! MIS stuff was also big too. Fast forward, we flooded the market with IT people who had no passion, and simply where not really qualified to do the job at hand. Now IT is mostly a high paying job where it some how is acceptable to hire a contractor to do all the work for you. And when something goes wrong, it was the contractors fault. Anyways now that I have been writing software for over 10 years and I see what candidates are capable of doing when giving them simple test on interviews (no not that white board non-since, mostly "hello world" in whatever language they want). I am fairly sure that the vast majority of the candidates would have not passed the C or C++ classes taught in my high school, or the ones in the local collage. Schools are so fucked. Low turn out, low grades, and low number of people passing results in LOWERING the bar. Get ready everybody for a fun wonder time where nobody knows how to do anything and it is always somebodies else's fault why they could not get the work done! The number one thing I get from peers when they fail to get the work done over the years has been 'well I have had no training on this', and 'nobody showed me how to do it', when showing them how to do it would basically mean doing it... And no this was not a once time event, things like every task would require you to "show them how to do it", result in meetings to talk about solutions. Opps, turned into a rant. Anyways I am glad I missed the big switch over to java, not knowing C/C++ would have killed any chance of me getting where I have got.
    - 8y ago
- Ancalagon 8y ago
  I bet the issue is not necessarily a lack of interest, more likely a lack of exposure. There arent many (successful) programmers willing to work on a teacher's salary when they can probably make 3 or 4 times that elsewhere in industry. I didnt even have the option to take AP computer science in high school, I imagine thats due to the lack of teachers, and that situation is probably pretty similar around the country
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    Back then at my school the state offered CS training for mathematics teachers who wanted to broaden their horizon. They were supposed to pass their knowledge on to other teachers who were interested. This worked well, but it helps if your teachers aren't all low-achievers.
- woodruffw 8y ago
  I look the Computer Science AP in 2013, and I'd say it involved more than light familiarity with Java: I had to write algorithms, do asymptotic analysis on my algorithms, and fix logic bugs in code samples. There were some rote memorization parts too (what does this Java class do? Is Java pass-by-value or by reference?), but I'd say that the class earned its "Computer Science" title. I skipped the introductory CS course at my university, but the impression that I got from my friends that took it was that it was roughly as rigorous and technical as my AP experience was. On the other hand, I know nothing about AP CS Principles.
  - humanrebar 8y ago
    > Is Java pass-by-value or by reference? So they have trick questions on the test? A. Pass by value B. Pass by reference C. <correct answer> Well, the thing is...
    - woodruffw 8y ago
      I think they excused it as "pass by value, but some of the values are references." It was a bad question.
- vincentriemer 8y ago
  I took AP Computer Science A in 2010 and while I'd agree that it was hardly a thorough curriculum, it did give me the knowledge to successfully skip Comp Sci 1 in college. My case was slightly unique though in that we had probably the best comp sci teacher you could expect in high school. He got through the entire A curriculum in half the time and spent the rest exploring more advanced topics/projects we were individually interested in.
- cmiles74 8y ago
  I believe any familiarity with any programming language will provide a student with a step-up when they leave the high-school environment and enter college. While I am not excited about AP classes lowering standards, the Wikipedia entry makes it clear that it was discontinued because so few students were taking the exam. After reading the article, it appears that most of these organizations working with high school educators and their students arrived on the seen much more recently: Code.org started working with the College Board in 2015. What they are doing appears to be working: the number of students both taking and passing the test has risen. This strikes me as unequivocally positive. In my experience, Java is not the friendliest environment. For someone with zero development background, I can easily imagine that the IDE and tools themselves are intimidating, let alone the language with all it's jargon and (in many cases) self-aggrandizing techno-speak. Perhaps the success of these programs will get more development classes into high school, but I think that even this level of success is significant.
- surbas 8y ago
  I am not sure why you are saying this is a "half-truth." AP classes always had a half-year courses (A) vs a year long study (AB.) The Comp Sci A test has been taught for 20+ years, and looking at the cirrocumuli looks like a punch list of today's typical junior dev interview, and looks equivalent to the real first class (not survey) in any com sci program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science_A
  - nv-vn 8y ago
    In my experience that was not accurate at all to the real class. In reality, we didn't cover about 50% of that at all (since it doesn't appear on the test). Instead, it was all arrays and for loops then 3-4 questions about how inheritance works and the free response questions that are graded based on like 3 specific details that could appear in a solution rather than correctness. This article seems like an advertisement for the class because it doesn't reflect the actual content or exam at all.
- zZorgz 8y ago
  The A version has been around as long as the AB version. For those unfamiliar, A is roughly equivalent to 1 college semester and AB was roughly equivalent to 2 college semesters, just like AP courses for other subjects. I was a developer in various imperative/OO languages already before I took the AB course, and I still found it to be challenging. I think for many that have never done any programming or CS, the A version course may still be decent. It does fall short under Big O, but there should also be some extra buffer time to do something else in the year outside the AP material. That depends on the quality of the instructor though.
  - burfog 8y ago
    It's not like that for the other subjects. Chemistry has just "Chemistry", good for two college semesters. Physics has four classes! There isn't an "A" or "B" or "AB", but there is a "C"! You can choose "Physics C Mechanics" and "Physics C Electricity and Magnetism", each worth a college semester. (you can do both) Alternately you can choose "Physics 1" and "Physics 2", which are each worth a semester for non-science non-engineering majors. Economics has both "Macroeconomics" and "Microeconomics". It's not "A" and "AB", nor is it "A" and "B".
    - zZorgz 8y ago
      Fair. I was thinking of Calculus which was similar though and had AB and BC? It’s been a while. Physics C has two distinctive parts as you noted.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  My school did not offer the course, but I was allowed to take some basic computer related course and just self teach myself the curriculum in the corner of the room and take the test on my own in 2012. I have never formally studied computer science but I think it was a reasonable curriculum. It was all java based. It primarily emphasized the basic concepts of OOP, testing if you can work with a basic API, and designing some recursive algorithms to solve a problem. I took 11 other APs, and felt it was comparably deep relative to the other tests. Generally I thought the AP classes were very effective as mature 101 introductions to the subject matter. Computer Science has a rough time because many students may reasonably be well beyond its expectations before even starting the course unlike one may expect for, say, Chemistry or Calculus. But I thought it was great for those who didn't already have the background.
- jmull 8y ago
  The article is mainly about participation for last year vs. this year. What happened in 2009 isn't that relevant.
- nv-vn 8y ago
  I wish I could double upvote this. There is pretty much nothing redeemable about these two courses and they have absolutely nothing to do with CS.
jobserunder 8y ago
"Minority"? More identity politics reporting. Yawn. Where I'm from... white males with mustaches are the minority.
surbas 8y ago
Female minorities are a woahfully under represented at today's software companies. This article is great news and shouldn't be shaded by "well it was harder in my day" BS.
- djschnei 8y ago
  Is the goal simply to boost the numbers of some arbitrary group of people clumped together because of their immutable characteristics? Or is the goal to improve the output and speed of innovation in an industry by exposing more people to it? If it's the former, you're probably right. If it's the latter, being concerned about sacrificed quality is not "BS".
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    I imagine the focus is righting the historic wrongs that lead to women and minorities being underrepresented in well-paying jobs, and not a mindless focus on ever-higher productivity.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      What historic wrongs kept these people out of programming? Last I checked most of programming came from the once persecuted nerd and geeks. Things have changed for sure, but every time I hear this statement with relation to programming I can't help to think about how laffable it is. For the longest time computers and programming were one of the major places you could go and learn alot and become good at all while being under the cloak of anonymity. Back when this would have made a difference it was almost mandatory to conceal both gender and race because the bandwidth for live streaming video,voice simply was not there. Vast amounts of work and collaboration were done via text interfaces. This is a narrative I keep seeing with little proof to back it. The lack of the numbers representing a group does not automatically imply discrimination. And if you are going to bring that to the table then you are going to need to show some hard proof that is the defacto reason why any group of people are not represented. But even if you were right, I am not entirely sure setting merit aside is such a good idea for roles that can mean life or death of others. Do you not want the best heart surgeon working on your heart? Do you not want the best programmer you can get programming robotic arms and the breaking subsystems of the car that is behind you in traffic? The only sane way to correct historic wrongs is by flooding the lower level education systems with money in poor areas. Programs to help single mothers, access to laptops and the internet. The second you lower the bar you are doing a disservice to society, and to the person you think you are helping.
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AlphaWeaver 8y ago
Increased participation in AP Computer Science courses is only marginally beneficial, I think. In high school I took the AP Computer Science course after working with Java for years, thinking it'd be an easy A. Was that ever far from the truth. My issue was that the quality of the course was plain terrible. Any school in my state (North Carolina) which didn't have an in-person teacher could offer the class through our statewide online course program, and the state of the course on there was dreadful. Typos everywhere, incorrect and trick questions on the exams. A friend of mine in a similar situation as me had to email the instructor four times with the message "I DID include what you graded me off for, it's on line 44" before the instructor looked at line 44. Broadening participation in computing is crucial, but we also need to devote serious attention to cleaning up the curriculum. If we don't, we'll end up making more kids hate Computer Science than like it.
- commanderjroc 8y ago
  Yes, we do need to improve the curriculum. But, how would we do it? When I took Intro to Comp Sci, we didn't even go over design patterns and what makes good code. We did get instilled into us the principle of Single Responsibility. As for trick questions, I got them in my Math Major and the comp sci classes I took. So, idk, if having trick questions is necessarily a deterrent, especially for a course preparing you for college.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Why would you go over design patterns in "intro to computer science"? That's more properly the domain of software engineering, isn't it?
    - commanderjroc 8y ago
      I am not saying a full lecture or something. But maybe a required reading? People are taking it as a survey course, an introduction, so it would be nice to give a little teaser or something of stuff that is to come later on.
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todd8 8y ago
The headline exaggerates the gains for women. From the article: This year: total. = 135992 up 31% over last year female = 38195 up 39% over last year From this we can calculate last years numbers: Last year: total = 103811 female = 27478 Comparing total participation: This year: female/total = 26.5% Last year: female/total = 28.1% African-Americans and Hispanic and Latino students made more robust gains. The gains for women might not even be statistically significant.
- SamUK96 8y ago
  It would be useful to calculate the percentage difference between n_group/n_population and n_group_course/n_course. This would essentially calculate a "representivity" score for that course. So, for example, according to the 2010 US Census, Black or African Americans constitute 12.6% of the population. However, according to [1], they constitute only ~5% of the CS degrees awarded. Therefore the score for CS and Black or African Americans is |12.6 - 5|/12.6 = ~60% underrepresentation. [1] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/110701/#demographics https://datausa.io/profile/cip/110701/#demographics
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    This negates the idea that a certain demographic may be disinclined to a particular subject (which is equivalent to being inclined towards other subjects). One needs access to courses without unnecessary discrimination, one does not need to be pushed in to courses simply to make their representation scores better.
- acomar 8y ago
  That's a roughly 10% increase over last year in the relative rate of participation: (38195-27478)/(103811)*100 = 10.32% Comparing two percentages directly like that, while intuitive, misses trends in relatively small subsets of the larger population.
xutopia 8y ago
As someone not from the United States the acronym "AP" really threw me off. Had to look it up. It stands for Advanced Placement and despite its name is an introductory class.
- deleted 8y ago
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- Sileni 8y ago
  That doesn't quite convey the full meaning though. It's meant to be a college level introductory class that high school students who get ahead in other classes are allowed to take. Most AP courses also have the option to take a placement test at the end, and if you do well enough, you can receive college credit from the college or university backing the program.
  - astura 8y ago
    In theory. In practice a college can freely decided if they want to accept them or not. My school loled at AP Computer Science classes and didn't accept them for any sort of credit for anyone.
    - cellularmitosis 8y ago
      That's not necessarily a bad thing if those credits are in your chosen major. If you are a CS student, you'll want the university-quality CS education.
      - astura 8y ago
        Indeed, I didn't think it was a bad thing. However, College Board (the company who administers these exams) sells it as "university-quality CS education" and people pay money to take them. So they sell AP CS as a college level class but my school looked at it and said "this isn't college level." In general, I'm very skeptical of the quality of these AP exams and if AP classes are truly are college level (I didn't take any myself, my school didn't offer AP classes and I was a huge slacker in high school anyway)
dvh 8y ago
AP - advanced placement (no idea what that is)
- protomyth 8y ago
  If you are in the US, its a program to take classes at a higher level than the high school has. Its where all those folks with GPAs over 4.0 (4.0 being a pretty standard of A) come from (I guess they go up to 5.0). If you are in the US and have never encountered AP courses then you experienced the fun of starting about 30 yards back in a 100 yard race for that college admission fun.
protomyth 8y ago
I found a Medium post[1] that this article seems to lean heavily on, but I don't see anywhere we can get the statistics. It would be really helpful as we are trying to get some supporting data on Native Americans in CompSci. 1) https://medium.com/@codeorg/girls-and-minorities-break-records-in-computer-science-as-fastest-growing-groups-39d23425810e https://medium.com/@codeorg/girls-and-minorities-break-recor...
jarmitage 8y ago
If you want to learn more about research into broadening participation in CS in the US, I recommend Mark Guzdial's blog and publications: https://computinged.wordpress.com/ https://computinged.wordpress.com/ This is a good talk from Mark about his (and others') work: "Meeting the needs for a computationally literate society" (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk9y09mmL9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk9y09mmL9M
dawidw 8y ago
I think we should be interested in someone's achievements, not on sex, skin colour, height, weight, clothes etc. of that person.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  We don't live in a perfect world; we live in a world where people face blatant and systematic discrimination based on their physical characteristics. Given this, we have two choices: pretend that the world is a fair place where merit is all that matters, or we can attempt to boost those who've been treated unfairly with the hope that society will gradually improve because of it. Your statement makes me think you're a pretender.
- zpallin 8y ago
  Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone is judged by these factors, and so in order to achieve your ideal world, we must actively encourage participation from people of marginalized demographics.
randyrand 8y ago
I think it’s odd to limit the scope of the “minority” label of a global industry to just the USA. 18.2 million software developers in the world. only 3.6 million are from the usa. ~5.7 million are from india. 5.8 million from china. etc. No one race has the majority. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-careers/india-to-overtake-u-s--on-number-of-developers-by-2017.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-careers/ind...
- hnbroseph 8y ago
  doesn't seem that odd to me given that the website is "usa today"...
  - mikeyouse 8y ago
    Especially when they're talking about the AP exams given in American high schools.
  - randyrand 8y ago
    sure, but LA times doesn’t use the minority label with white people even though they are a minority in LA. In other words, the jurisdiction of the newspaper is not always what they use when calculating the “minority” label. A minority label depends on context, and IMO global context makes more sense when talking about SWE.
    - hnbroseph 8y ago
      > global context makes more sense when talking about SWE why would any specific context "make more sense" when talking about SWE?
      - randyrand 8y ago
        Because SWE projects and companies are global. The internet, mobile and desktop OSs are all global. The top engineering companies have offices all over the world that work together.
- 8y ago
DocEasyE 8y ago
female numbers sore for comp sci courses, 5 years later we have an over supply of media marketing specialist lmao with no programming or technical skills and a few great female programmers who naturally probably already thought like a programmer bc they were taught to question why rather to accept facts as is.

90 points by MilnerRoute 8y ago

This is a half-truth, because there isn't really an AP Computer Science anymore. From wikipedia: "Due to low numbers of students taking the exam, AP Computer Science AB was discontinued following the May 2009 exam administration." Today's offering is, at best, some light familiarity with Java. That one is called "AP Computer Science A". There is even a wholly useless "AP Computer Science Principles" that involves writing small essays about non-technical aspects of computing.

iopuy 8y ago
Wow, that sounds like a failure of teaching to me. The exam switched from C++ to Java in roughly 2004 and then it is discontinued in 2009? Perhaps a change to the teaching methods could have been implemented before cancellation. Although I took the case via distance learning and I'm not sure that would have had any effect for someone like me.
- chrisabrams 8y ago
  I was a part of the first class that changed the AP test from C++ to Java. Our CS teacher had state winning teams for C++ and none of us passed the Java test :/ The communication and process for switching the test was handled poorly to say the least. It was pretty hard spending years looking forward to high school CS to learn C++ and then be denied that. To this day I’ve used Java for absolutely nothing but I do plenty of native compilation for JS/Python -> C/C++.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
Makes sense why more people are enrolled if they lowered the complexity but basically kept the name.
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  I don't know who is behind this sort of thing but I watched it happens to IT growing up. System administration and working with the low levels of operation systems (not programming so much, things like bash, cmd, and all the low level stuff you can do before you get to programming) was something that actually took some skill. If I recall a of our operating systems came out of people who were more classified as system administrators. Anyways my local school offered a associates in Unix Operating systems. The teacher was amazing, probably one of the best I had, but his class got canned for some shitty windows bullshit because the students complained so much about it being to hard. Yeah the class had rigor, but the problem really was 2 fold. Students did not want to really learn the stuff and mostly lacked a good foundation in computers at all. So they struggled on simple things like pipes and redirects. I also remember they were pushing IT related classes very hard. You could not go anywhere on campus without some poster saying how much money you would make if you got a career in IT information systems! MIS stuff was also big too. Fast forward, we flooded the market with IT people who had no passion, and simply where not really qualified to do the job at hand. Now IT is mostly a high paying job where it some how is acceptable to hire a contractor to do all the work for you. And when something goes wrong, it was the contractors fault. Anyways now that I have been writing software for over 10 years and I see what candidates are capable of doing when giving them simple test on interviews (no not that white board non-since, mostly "hello world" in whatever language they want). I am fairly sure that the vast majority of the candidates would have not passed the C or C++ classes taught in my high school, or the ones in the local collage. Schools are so fucked. Low turn out, low grades, and low number of people passing results in LOWERING the bar. Get ready everybody for a fun wonder time where nobody knows how to do anything and it is always somebodies else's fault why they could not get the work done! The number one thing I get from peers when they fail to get the work done over the years has been 'well I have had no training on this', and 'nobody showed me how to do it', when showing them how to do it would basically mean doing it... And no this was not a once time event, things like every task would require you to "show them how to do it", result in meetings to talk about solutions. Opps, turned into a rant. Anyways I am glad I missed the big switch over to java, not knowing C/C++ would have killed any chance of me getting where I have got.
  - 8y ago
Ancalagon 8y ago
I bet the issue is not necessarily a lack of interest, more likely a lack of exposure. There arent many (successful) programmers willing to work on a teacher's salary when they can probably make 3 or 4 times that elsewhere in industry. I didnt even have the option to take AP computer science in high school, I imagine thats due to the lack of teachers, and that situation is probably pretty similar around the country
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  Back then at my school the state offered CS training for mathematics teachers who wanted to broaden their horizon. They were supposed to pass their knowledge on to other teachers who were interested. This worked well, but it helps if your teachers aren't all low-achievers.
woodruffw 8y ago
I look the Computer Science AP in 2013, and I'd say it involved more than light familiarity with Java: I had to write algorithms, do asymptotic analysis on my algorithms, and fix logic bugs in code samples. There were some rote memorization parts too (what does this Java class do? Is Java pass-by-value or by reference?), but I'd say that the class earned its "Computer Science" title. I skipped the introductory CS course at my university, but the impression that I got from my friends that took it was that it was roughly as rigorous and technical as my AP experience was. On the other hand, I know nothing about AP CS Principles.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  > Is Java pass-by-value or by reference? So they have trick questions on the test? A. Pass by value B. Pass by reference C. <correct answer> Well, the thing is...
  - woodruffw 8y ago
    I think they excused it as "pass by value, but some of the values are references." It was a bad question.
vincentriemer 8y ago
I took AP Computer Science A in 2010 and while I'd agree that it was hardly a thorough curriculum, it did give me the knowledge to successfully skip Comp Sci 1 in college. My case was slightly unique though in that we had probably the best comp sci teacher you could expect in high school. He got through the entire A curriculum in half the time and spent the rest exploring more advanced topics/projects we were individually interested in.
cmiles74 8y ago
I believe any familiarity with any programming language will provide a student with a step-up when they leave the high-school environment and enter college. While I am not excited about AP classes lowering standards, the Wikipedia entry makes it clear that it was discontinued because so few students were taking the exam. After reading the article, it appears that most of these organizations working with high school educators and their students arrived on the seen much more recently: Code.org started working with the College Board in 2015. What they are doing appears to be working: the number of students both taking and passing the test has risen. This strikes me as unequivocally positive. In my experience, Java is not the friendliest environment. For someone with zero development background, I can easily imagine that the IDE and tools themselves are intimidating, let alone the language with all it's jargon and (in many cases) self-aggrandizing techno-speak. Perhaps the success of these programs will get more development classes into high school, but I think that even this level of success is significant.
surbas 8y ago
I am not sure why you are saying this is a "half-truth." AP classes always had a half-year courses (A) vs a year long study (AB.) The Comp Sci A test has been taught for 20+ years, and looking at the cirrocumuli looks like a punch list of today's typical junior dev interview, and looks equivalent to the real first class (not survey) in any com sci program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science_A
- nv-vn 8y ago
  In my experience that was not accurate at all to the real class. In reality, we didn't cover about 50% of that at all (since it doesn't appear on the test). Instead, it was all arrays and for loops then 3-4 questions about how inheritance works and the free response questions that are graded based on like 3 specific details that could appear in a solution rather than correctness. This article seems like an advertisement for the class because it doesn't reflect the actual content or exam at all.
zZorgz 8y ago
The A version has been around as long as the AB version. For those unfamiliar, A is roughly equivalent to 1 college semester and AB was roughly equivalent to 2 college semesters, just like AP courses for other subjects. I was a developer in various imperative/OO languages already before I took the AB course, and I still found it to be challenging. I think for many that have never done any programming or CS, the A version course may still be decent. It does fall short under Big O, but there should also be some extra buffer time to do something else in the year outside the AP material. That depends on the quality of the instructor though.
- burfog 8y ago
  It's not like that for the other subjects. Chemistry has just "Chemistry", good for two college semesters. Physics has four classes! There isn't an "A" or "B" or "AB", but there is a "C"! You can choose "Physics C Mechanics" and "Physics C Electricity and Magnetism", each worth a college semester. (you can do both) Alternately you can choose "Physics 1" and "Physics 2", which are each worth a semester for non-science non-engineering majors. Economics has both "Macroeconomics" and "Microeconomics". It's not "A" and "AB", nor is it "A" and "B".
  - zZorgz 8y ago
    Fair. I was thinking of Calculus which was similar though and had AB and BC? It’s been a while. Physics C has two distinctive parts as you noted.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
My school did not offer the course, but I was allowed to take some basic computer related course and just self teach myself the curriculum in the corner of the room and take the test on my own in 2012. I have never formally studied computer science but I think it was a reasonable curriculum. It was all java based. It primarily emphasized the basic concepts of OOP, testing if you can work with a basic API, and designing some recursive algorithms to solve a problem. I took 11 other APs, and felt it was comparably deep relative to the other tests. Generally I thought the AP classes were very effective as mature 101 introductions to the subject matter. Computer Science has a rough time because many students may reasonably be well beyond its expectations before even starting the course unlike one may expect for, say, Chemistry or Calculus. But I thought it was great for those who didn't already have the background.
jmull 8y ago
The article is mainly about participation for last year vs. this year. What happened in 2009 isn't that relevant.
nv-vn 8y ago
I wish I could double upvote this. There is pretty much nothing redeemable about these two courses and they have absolutely nothing to do with CS.

jobserunder 8y ago

"Minority"? More identity politics reporting. Yawn. Where I'm from... white males with mustaches are the minority.

surbas 8y ago

Female minorities are a woahfully under represented at today's software companies. This article is great news and shouldn't be shaded by "well it was harder in my day" BS.

djschnei 8y ago
Is the goal simply to boost the numbers of some arbitrary group of people clumped together because of their immutable characteristics? Or is the goal to improve the output and speed of innovation in an industry by exposing more people to it? If it's the former, you're probably right. If it's the latter, being concerned about sacrificed quality is not "BS".
- emodendroket 8y ago
  I imagine the focus is righting the historic wrongs that lead to women and minorities being underrepresented in well-paying jobs, and not a mindless focus on ever-higher productivity.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    What historic wrongs kept these people out of programming? Last I checked most of programming came from the once persecuted nerd and geeks. Things have changed for sure, but every time I hear this statement with relation to programming I can't help to think about how laffable it is. For the longest time computers and programming were one of the major places you could go and learn alot and become good at all while being under the cloak of anonymity. Back when this would have made a difference it was almost mandatory to conceal both gender and race because the bandwidth for live streaming video,voice simply was not there. Vast amounts of work and collaboration were done via text interfaces. This is a narrative I keep seeing with little proof to back it. The lack of the numbers representing a group does not automatically imply discrimination. And if you are going to bring that to the table then you are going to need to show some hard proof that is the defacto reason why any group of people are not represented. But even if you were right, I am not entirely sure setting merit aside is such a good idea for roles that can mean life or death of others. Do you not want the best heart surgeon working on your heart? Do you not want the best programmer you can get programming robotic arms and the breaking subsystems of the car that is behind you in traffic? The only sane way to correct historic wrongs is by flooding the lower level education systems with money in poor areas. Programs to help single mothers, access to laptops and the internet. The second you lower the bar you are doing a disservice to society, and to the person you think you are helping.

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AlphaWeaver 8y ago

Increased participation in AP Computer Science courses is only marginally beneficial, I think. In high school I took the AP Computer Science course after working with Java for years, thinking it'd be an easy A. Was that ever far from the truth. My issue was that the quality of the course was plain terrible. Any school in my state (North Carolina) which didn't have an in-person teacher could offer the class through our statewide online course program, and the state of the course on there was dreadful. Typos everywhere, incorrect and trick questions on the exams. A friend of mine in a similar situation as me had to email the instructor four times with the message "I DID include what you graded me off for, it's on line 44" before the instructor looked at line 44. Broadening participation in computing is crucial, but we also need to devote serious attention to cleaning up the curriculum. If we don't, we'll end up making more kids hate Computer Science than like it.

commanderjroc 8y ago
Yes, we do need to improve the curriculum. But, how would we do it? When I took Intro to Comp Sci, we didn't even go over design patterns and what makes good code. We did get instilled into us the principle of Single Responsibility. As for trick questions, I got them in my Math Major and the comp sci classes I took. So, idk, if having trick questions is necessarily a deterrent, especially for a course preparing you for college.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Why would you go over design patterns in "intro to computer science"? That's more properly the domain of software engineering, isn't it?
  - commanderjroc 8y ago
    I am not saying a full lecture or something. But maybe a required reading? People are taking it as a survey course, an introduction, so it would be nice to give a little teaser or something of stuff that is to come later on.

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todd8 8y ago

The headline exaggerates the gains for women. From the article: This year: total. = 135992 up 31% over last year female = 38195 up 39% over last year From this we can calculate last years numbers: Last year: total = 103811 female = 27478 Comparing total participation: This year: female/total = 26.5% Last year: female/total = 28.1% African-Americans and Hispanic and Latino students made more robust gains. The gains for women might not even be statistically significant.

SamUK96 8y ago
It would be useful to calculate the percentage difference between n_group/n_population and n_group_course/n_course. This would essentially calculate a "representivity" score for that course. So, for example, according to the 2010 US Census, Black or African Americans constitute 12.6% of the population. However, according to [1], they constitute only ~5% of the CS degrees awarded. Therefore the score for CS and Black or African Americans is |12.6 - 5|/12.6 = ~60% underrepresentation. [1] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/110701/#demographics https://datausa.io/profile/cip/110701/#demographics
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  This negates the idea that a certain demographic may be disinclined to a particular subject (which is equivalent to being inclined towards other subjects). One needs access to courses without unnecessary discrimination, one does not need to be pushed in to courses simply to make their representation scores better.
acomar 8y ago
That's a roughly 10% increase over last year in the relative rate of participation: (38195-27478)/(103811)*100 = 10.32% Comparing two percentages directly like that, while intuitive, misses trends in relatively small subsets of the larger population.

xutopia 8y ago

As someone not from the United States the acronym "AP" really threw me off. Had to look it up. It stands for Advanced Placement and despite its name is an introductory class.

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Sileni 8y ago
That doesn't quite convey the full meaning though. It's meant to be a college level introductory class that high school students who get ahead in other classes are allowed to take. Most AP courses also have the option to take a placement test at the end, and if you do well enough, you can receive college credit from the college or university backing the program.
- astura 8y ago
  In theory. In practice a college can freely decided if they want to accept them or not. My school loled at AP Computer Science classes and didn't accept them for any sort of credit for anyone.
  - cellularmitosis 8y ago
    That's not necessarily a bad thing if those credits are in your chosen major. If you are a CS student, you'll want the university-quality CS education.
    - astura 8y ago
      Indeed, I didn't think it was a bad thing. However, College Board (the company who administers these exams) sells it as "university-quality CS education" and people pay money to take them. So they sell AP CS as a college level class but my school looked at it and said "this isn't college level." In general, I'm very skeptical of the quality of these AP exams and if AP classes are truly are college level (I didn't take any myself, my school didn't offer AP classes and I was a huge slacker in high school anyway)

dvh 8y ago

AP - advanced placement (no idea what that is)

protomyth 8y ago
If you are in the US, its a program to take classes at a higher level than the high school has. Its where all those folks with GPAs over 4.0 (4.0 being a pretty standard of A) come from (I guess they go up to 5.0). If you are in the US and have never encountered AP courses then you experienced the fun of starting about 30 yards back in a 100 yard race for that college admission fun.

protomyth 8y ago

I found a Medium post[1] that this article seems to lean heavily on, but I don't see anywhere we can get the statistics. It would be really helpful as we are trying to get some supporting data on Native Americans in CompSci. 1) https://medium.com/@codeorg/girls-and-minorities-break-records-in-computer-science-as-fastest-growing-groups-39d23425810e https://medium.com/@codeorg/girls-and-minorities-break-recor...

jarmitage 8y ago

If you want to learn more about research into broadening participation in CS in the US, I recommend Mark Guzdial's blog and publications: https://computinged.wordpress.com/ https://computinged.wordpress.com/ This is a good talk from Mark about his (and others') work: "Meeting the needs for a computationally literate society" (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk9y09mmL9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk9y09mmL9M

dawidw 8y ago

I think we should be interested in someone's achievements, not on sex, skin colour, height, weight, clothes etc. of that person.

mywittyname 8y ago
We don't live in a perfect world; we live in a world where people face blatant and systematic discrimination based on their physical characteristics. Given this, we have two choices: pretend that the world is a fair place where merit is all that matters, or we can attempt to boost those who've been treated unfairly with the hope that society will gradually improve because of it. Your statement makes me think you're a pretender.
zpallin 8y ago
Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone is judged by these factors, and so in order to achieve your ideal world, we must actively encourage participation from people of marginalized demographics.

randyrand 8y ago

I think it’s odd to limit the scope of the “minority” label of a global industry to just the USA. 18.2 million software developers in the world. only 3.6 million are from the usa. ~5.7 million are from india. 5.8 million from china. etc. No one race has the majority. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-careers/india-to-overtake-u-s--on-number-of-developers-by-2017.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-careers/ind...

hnbroseph 8y ago
doesn't seem that odd to me given that the website is "usa today"...
- mikeyouse 8y ago
  Especially when they're talking about the AP exams given in American high schools.
- randyrand 8y ago
  sure, but LA times doesn’t use the minority label with white people even though they are a minority in LA. In other words, the jurisdiction of the newspaper is not always what they use when calculating the “minority” label. A minority label depends on context, and IMO global context makes more sense when talking about SWE.
  - hnbroseph 8y ago
    > global context makes more sense when talking about SWE why would any specific context "make more sense" when talking about SWE?
    - randyrand 8y ago
      Because SWE projects and companies are global. The internet, mobile and desktop OSs are all global. The top engineering companies have offices all over the world that work together.
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DocEasyE 8y ago

female numbers sore for comp sci courses, 5 years later we have an over supply of media marketing specialist lmao with no programming or technical skills and a few great female programmers who naturally probably already thought like a programmer bc they were taught to question why rather to accept facts as is.