Re: Anarchy and spontaneous order in business and education

Hara Ra (harara@shamanics.com)
Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:51:06 -0700

Andrea Gallagher wrote:
> So, in an anarchic (or market-like) school, what do you have to show the
> employers? You need something more consise that the entire portfolio of
> work, and you'd like something that helps them rank you in relation to
> other applicants. The option our federal government like is to create one
> Great Standard Tesk of All Knowledge, but that's likely to dictate how
> children are made to learn and doesn't help in specialized fields. I'd
> rather start thinking from the employer's perspective, of what they need to
> know. Any ideas?

Several of my job interviews included a brief test or homework problem
used to evaluate my compentency and turn of mind. I'll give you an
example (a real one).

When being intervied by Tymshare, for a programming postion:

Given a 32 bit word, identify the position of the most significant
'1' bit. Maximize speed, minimize resources used.

Note: This problem has an obvious solution, which is too slow. There
is another obvious solution, which takes WAAAAY too much memory. (This
note was not provided as part of the test, but as a hint to those of
you who might want to solve this little puzzle. I'd be happy to analyse
any answers.)

Point is, most educational credentials are so much whoo whaaah.

O---------------------------------O
| Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> |
| Box 8334 Santa Cruz, CA 95061 |
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