
Rape question baffles computer science students  - bcj
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/rape-question-baffles-computer-science-students-1.2517578
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sp332
From [http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/memorial-
university...](http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/memorial-university-
student-union-seeking-apology-over-rape-204626731.html) here is the question:

 _Write and test a Prolog program that solves the following problem: Everybody
needs love and understanding. People get their courage to live from loving and
understanding. Understanding means listening and compassion. Rape victims have
to gather their courage to live in order to stand on their dignity and to face
future. Heather is a young rape victim. She would die if she could not stand
on her dignity and no future. Unfortunately the persistent bullying online and
calling her “slut” in her community show that nobody would listen her and
there is no compassion towards her. A person willing to die causes the
person’s attempting suicide. Whether is Heather attempting a suicide?_

I wonder why the English is so bad? It's hard to tell if the teacher is really
encouraging compassion, or just contriving a situation that translates easily
into Prolog.

~~~
mschuster91
Certainly, the English is not bad - but there's nothing in that assignment
text that should offend anyone. Except, of course, "political-correctness" and
feminist extremists who want to see offensiveness everywhere they look at, so
that they can attention-whore around.

And yes, I can't stand this kind of people. Seek for attention where the
situation demands it, not just for your own personal gain.

~~~
gpcz
One in six women in the US have experienced an attempted or completed rape in
their lifetime (src:
[https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/172837.pdf](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/172837.pdf)
). Is it worth potentially inducing PTSD symptoms to use that subject matter
in this question? I'd say no.

~~~
sp332
It's not just PTSD, but trivializing the act in a word problem. I'm not sure
the teacher meant it in a trivial way though. It could have been an awareness
campaign gone wrong.

------
djent
In terms of social network infrastructure, recognizing whether your user is a
rape victim, or any victim, and analyzing their communications to determine if
they are being bullied is a valuable asset. Instagram displays an eating
disorder help line if you search for "#ana," "#mia," or other eating disorder
related hashtags. I once had Facebook delete all my messages from a certain
person because they thought that person was bullying me - which they weren't.
What baffles me is that this professor is being sent to "training" when their
work is ultimately wanted out of social networks.

~~~
gpcz
The question (src:
[http://i.imgur.com/CwegI9i.png](http://i.imgur.com/CwegI9i.png) ) is a Prolog
problem, which is just a bunch of logical premises that the system is supposed
to find the conclusion for (kinda like A=>B, B=>C, therefore A=>C). The
problem doesn't involve analyzing communications or predicting anything, and
it would have little or no use when developing social network systems.

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11thEarlOfMar
Frankly, you can't have it both ways. Social networks are pressed to take more
accountability for the activities of bad apples, and their first line of
defense is to automate and monitor. The algorithms that do so are going to be
complex and involve insight that I don't believe has much research behind it.
So this is fairly cutting edge and worthwhile.

On the other hand, understanding how mainstream student and academia may react
to a lightening-rod topic like rape is not the strong suit of a lot of
computer scientists.

The professor needed to clearly communicate _why_ this was a worthwhile
assignment. I'd bet he'd have gotten a completely different response.

~~~
DanBC
> The algorithms that do so are going to be complex and involve insight that I
> don't believe has much research behind it. So this is fairly cutting edge
> and worthwhile.

Here's the assignment paper.

[https://i.imgur.com/yj7aaQA.png](https://i.imgur.com/yj7aaQA.png)

Pouring liquid between a 3 and 5 gallon jug to end up with 4 gallons shows the
kind of level this assignment is aimed at.

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catmanjan
This would actually have been a fun and interesting assignment to do, not to
mention the potential application.

I'm sure the opposition would have been fine with it if it had been more
"weasel-wordy", i.e. develop system to determine if cis-gendered
anthropomorphic entity is likely to cause [TRIGGER WARNING] non-self-help.

------
sharemywin
so their college stands for running away from hard problems because the are
socially unpalatable.

~~~
grej
I agree. Is the subject matter painful? Absolutely. But is this potentially
life saving work? Also Absolutely.

------
DanBC
Obviously this could be important work. Also, really obviously, you don't just
dump a question involving rape and suicide into a minor quiz without any
warning.

What level is CS3710 aimed at?

~~~
mschuster91
Why is this "warning" everywhere needed? If you can't read a simple text where
the word "rape" is present, then get fucking medical/psychological help
instead of going on everybody else's nerves by turning texts into unreadable
walls of [TW XYZ] or omitting (potentially life-saving) research just because
it involves "rape".

~~~
DanBC
This isn't "potentially life saving research". It's a 25 point question on a
quiz.

Edit: here's an image of the assignments to see whT level this is aimed at.
The three and five litre jug question, and 7 day time frame, are clues that
this in not "life saving research" but in fact a simple assignment in an intro
level course.

[https://i.imgur.com/yj7aaQA.png](https://i.imgur.com/yj7aaQA.png)

~~~
mschuster91
So, are you implying that anything involving potentially "dangerous" stuff
like rape, suicide, violence, drinking, war etc is to be reserved only for
"serious" academic research and be left out of test questions?

Imagine a test question "To one liter of a water/alcohol mixture in 1:1 ratio
half a liter of water is added. What is the new alcohol-to-water ratio?". A
former alcohol addict might be "triggered" by this question - but would you
exclude it from a test?

Or, in a history test, avoid asking questions about the Afghanistan war
because the kid's father lost a leg in Afghanistan?

~~~
DanBC
Suicide is one of the biggest causes of death, especially for men in that age
range. Suicidality involves complex mental health. It is entirely possible for
a person with suicidal thinking to be in treatment for that thinking but also
continuing to study at university. Dropping references to suicide into minor
assignments is a weird thing to do, especially if it's going to be framed with
such odd choice of words.

Rape is similarly common and for some (but not all) victims is extremely
distressing.

Can you understand why you don't just drop references to rape and suicide into
a short assignment with no other context?

~~~
mschuster91
So what? You're exposed to these topics everytime you watch TV news, listen to
any radio station with news reporting, read a newspaper (or the headlines
while walking through the city), reading Wikipedia articles, books, basically
taking part in life.

------
__pThrow
If I type suicide into google, google gives me a special infobox providing me
information on how to seek help.

suicide.org tells me:

About 33% of rape victims have suicidal thought. About 13% of rape victims
will attempt suicide.

I think these factoids provide abundant evidence the question is relevant to
the world and industry these students will graduate into.

You can decide for yourself if feminism and political correctness in the
universities are helping or harming academic education and research.

------
zaroth
And how about the first question on the quiz - which evokes a story about a
man's father marrying his step-daughter?

Perhaps the last question was not written by the same person who wrote the
preceding questions. It's totally nonsensical, although perhaps that's due to
the bad writing combined with trying to make the question easier to parse into
Prolog?

In any case, this is indeed a bizarre little quiz.

~~~
sp332
The first question is from an old silly song
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_My_Own_Grandpa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_My_Own_Grandpa)

------
jordsmi
I see nothing wrong with the question. I can't stand these people that get up
in arms about every little thing that they can.

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etanazir
student does not know how to complete assignment; so raises fuss with admin to
avoid it.

~~~
DanBC
The question has been posted in this thread. Use the language of your choice
to solve the question asked.

Compare that to the other questions on the assignment - the two jugs problem
for example.

