[Python-Dev] Summary of Tracker Issues

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

skip at pobox.com writes:

 >     >> The orb that shines in the sky during the day. ____
 > 
 >     Martin> This question I could not answer, because I don't know what an
 >     Martin> orb is (it's not an object request broker, right?)
 > 
 >     Martin> Is the answer "sun"?
 > 
 > It is indeed.  I would use "star" instead of "orb".

And what happens if the user writes "the sun"?  Everyday knowledge is
pretty slippery.

 > It might be reasonable to have a translate the questions into a
 > handful of other languages and let the user select the language.

Since English is the common language used in the community, I think a
better source of questions would be the English language itself, such
as:

How many words are in the question on this line?     ___ten___

John threw a ball at Mark.  Who threw it?            __John___

John was thrown a ball by Mark.  Who threw it?       __Mark___

I think most human readers able to use the tracker would be able to
handle even the passive "was thrown" construction without too much
trouble.

We could also use easy "reading comprehension" questions, say from the
Iowa achievement test for 11-year-olds. :-)  Or even the SAT (GMAT,
LSAT); there must be banks of practice questions for those.
(Copyright might be a problem, though.  Any fifth-grade teachers who
write drill programs for their kids out there?)

You could also have the user evaluate a simple Python program
fragment.  Probably it should contain an obvious typo or two to foil a
program that evals it.

It would be sad if somebody who could write a program to handle any of
those couldn't find a better job than working for spammers ....