A homework problem that takes less than two minutes hardly counts. In engineering classes, I've routinely had homework problems take hours. Not the whole assignment. One problem of eight or more. While I've on occasion had the same experience with maths and computer science homeworks, those have been less usual, if not the exception.
The first assignment for my computer science class in discrete structures was fifteen of these two-minute gems, with only one to be turned in. The other fourteen are for practice. Since all fourteen of the practice problems together added up to less than half the time necessary for, say, a filter design problem and also because I'm too diligent for my own good, I went ahead and did them all. I'm such a good student, but not so much that I don't hope this assignment sets the tone for the rest of the semester.
And, of course, this just confirms my suspicion that computer science majors are a bunch of pikers.
165 words | January 28, 2005 11:02 PM | Ivory tower