[Edu-sig] programming skills and IQ tests..

[Bill Punch]

There are a number of papers on the topic of measuring programmer 
aptitude. In general, I would strongly recommend looking through the 
Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG, http://www.ppig.org).

One paper in particular attracted a lot of attention about 4 years ago: 
"Testing Programmer Aptitude" 
(http://www.ppig.org/papers/18th-dehnadi.pdf). It was controversial at 
the time but was followed up sometime later. Have a look at the author's 
web page: Saeed Dehnadi 
(http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/) for his followups

Another article that tries to measure aptitude is Jeff Kramer's article 
on abstraction (in the Piaget sense) as a measure. 
(http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.120.6776&rep=rep1&type=pdf) 
though see the following for a, kind of, rebuttal 
(http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1138430).

        >>>bill<<<



Jurgis Pralgauskis wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I think one of best ways to teach programming is with examples (of
> course with a bit of theory explanation).
> I'd like to test my students' general ability to undersnand examples.
> Because I am confused, is it my fault or their laziness, or sth else,
> that some of them (nearly 30%) understnand nearly nothig what they were taught.
>
> Main question of email:
> Does anyone know freely distributable DB of such IQ quiz questions --
> preferrably mostly graphical, like
> http://iq-test.co.uk/iq-test/ or so
>
> I think it could come in handy for others (mathematics here as well)...
>
> I also hope, one can  train the attention/concentration with IQ tests
> -- which is verty important skill in understanding examples.
>
>
> Thanks in advance
>