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IP: Our product
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 20:08:29 -0500
From Peter Newmanns RISK
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 11:56:31 -0500 From: abuse () orion-com com (Joe Thompson) Subject: Risks of making assumptions on education (Wolper, RISKS-19.56) RISKS-19.56 contains the following statement by Jim Wolper, in reference to risks of misuse of the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System:
After all, pilots are no more computer literate than the population at large. I teach Computer Science at the university and flying at the airport, and there is no overlap between these student populations.
The assumption that appears to be made here is that computer science students are more literate than the population at large. There has been a long discussion of this (widespread) assumption on alt.sysadmin.recovery and the conclusion was that it is a rare CS program indeed which imparts computer literacy to its students. General agreement was that a CS degree certifies that you were given certain tools and did certain things with them; whether or not you can do different things with those tools, or use other tools, cannot be predicted. The more disturbing assumption that might be inferred from the quoted text is that the "general population" is uniformly *less* computer literate than those with CS degrees. This is most emphatically *not* true. None of this is intended as a critique of Mr. Wolper or his teaching. He seems to be well-informed and I'm sure he does his level best to ensure that his students (in both classes) are as well. The risk here is that many personnel departments do in fact hire on the basis of the above assumptions, with no idea of what they're getting themselves into. Joe Thompson, Charlottesville, VA <http://driver-8.rlc.net/>http://driver-8.rlc.net/
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- IP: Our product Dave Farber (Jan 26)