Re: Is my CS instructor nuts?

Alan Morgan wrote:
In article <4ec6i7F1dae41U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
osmium <r124c4u102@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Phlip" wrote:

James Dow Allen wrote:

Somewhere in one of Feynman's books there's a passage where he's goes
ape*** over...
No, it was far worse. The temperatures of the stars were given
and the student was asked for the *total* temperature (!).
So what? The book didn't claim the resulting number had any physics relevance (such as if the stars fell together) did it?
Most people make an inference that it makes sense to do what one is told to do, especially in a text book.

Here's another similar assignment. Add your mother's and your father's social security number (ignore the hyphens). Is the sum greater or less than your own number?

I recall, years ago, a listing of the top 500 telcom companies. The
magazine that reported this list said that they had moved to a new
system that allowed them to calculate all sorts of interesting and
pointless things about the data and, to illustrate this, announced
that the average phone number of these companies was up slightly
from last year.

Alan

That is absolutely priceless. Thank you. Did they report on the average ZIP code? Also up slightly I'd think.

--
Joe Wright
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
--- Albert Einstein ---
.