• r00ty@kbin.life
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      8 months ago

      I’m not really a fan of this kind of question. Especially if there’s enough questions that time will be an issue for most. Because at first glance it’s easy to think the answer might be the length of a day.

      There shouldn’t be a need to try to trick people into the wrong answer on an open question. Maybe with multiple choice but not an open answer question.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        8 months ago

        It relies on critical thinking (meaning thinking about your own thinking), basically, and most students aren’t very good at that.

        • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          This doesn’t rely on critical thinking. It just relies on understanding what “.length” does, which would’ve been previously covered in the lessons.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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            8 months ago

            Well, both. If you rushed through without recalling that length has specific meaning relative to strings, even though you do know that, that’s a critical thinking failure. But yeah, not knowing strings could do it too.

            • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              If you didn’t know the answer, it’s a critical thinking exercise? Not at all.

              Answering this question relies completely on understanding programming. A correct answer cannot be reached without an understanding of programming.

              • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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                8 months ago

                A correct answer cannot be reached without an understanding of programming.

                Yes. It does not follow, though, that knowledge of programming always leads to a correct answer. Since you seem like someone who might appreciate a formal logical description, you are affirming the consequent here.

                Again, without sufficient critical thinking one might just miss the detail that “Monday” is a string and not a custom unit-of-time object, inheriting from Day.

                • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  But you can only mistake it as a custom object of you understand how coding works. I’m not saying an understanding will prevent you from being wrong, I’m saying having critical thinking will not reach the answer if you don’t have an understanding.

      • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I get your point about it being a trick question but I think in this case it’s pretty reasonable that you would see code like this in real life. Where the programming metaphor and your understanding of the real world clash. It’s a very important skill to be able to spot the difference.