Office hours... fun

[arachne8x]

Ok so I had a very weird day. Got little work done but helped many people.

One of the students in the class I am TAing came by with gifts of ouzo and candy from greece. This I really appreciated from her. I don't know why but I think that she really appreciates the help I have been giving her.

Anyway I am still amazed that they let these students into this program. They are so screwed. They know nothing about statistics or anything else that I would consider general knowledge necessary for this program. For example... one of the things we went over today in my office hours was genetic algorithms. I had to teach the students how to represent numbers in binary.

Ok so readers of this lj.... do you feel that being able to represent numbers in binary is reasonable to expect. Bear in mind I learned this in fifth grade.

Comments

I would assume that any technical person would already know that...

[zsquirrelboy.livejournal.com]

but I shouldn't take more 30 seconds for them to understand it.

[eruvanna.livejournal.com]

Ok, realize that *most* people are taught binary in POST-Secondary classes. True, not hard to pick up, but most people do not learn this early. It's usualy something they learn when they go for a degree or training in something to deal with electronics of some sort, usually programming.