Geekiness

[mdlbear]

...does not appear to be hereditary. Odd. After several years I finally persuaded chaoswolf to try a computer course, in this case "Intro to Unix". We were going over the "script" for the third lab when I realized that I was just feeding her the lines -- she had no understanding at all of what she was doing. At that time I told her to research the commands she needed; pointed her at the man pages and a couple of beginners' books and suggested that she play around a little until she knew what she was doing.

Instead, what happened is that she turned off completely, did nothing, and is now dropping the course.

It's not as if she isn't a geek! She's an avid gamer -- she can handle arcane manuals, weird rules, and critters with funny names and dozens of bizarre special-case options. But she doesn't see the computer that way; it scares and confuses her. I think that if she'd gotten interested on her own, she would have enjoyed it immensely. It may be too late for that now that she's convinced herself that she "can't understand that command-line stuff".

Comments

They're not symmetric

[hazelchaz]

Logic puzzle 3 - you know which is the "front" and which is the "back." But in puzzle #1, we don't have assurances that every card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. So you have to check the other side of the K, to make sure it doesn't have a vowel on the back... (As well as the other two that have to be checked, of course.)

And "minimum" is the wrong term, although I'm not sure of the right one; the minimum course of action would be to have the statement disproved on the first card you turn over. I think it's "maximum number of cards you need to turn over".

In any event, you're right; geekiness comes in different flavors, and some people's brains aren't wired for breaking down problems algorithmically.

Chaz