[Edu-sig] project Euler

[kirby urner]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Steven Bird <sb at csse.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> 2009/2/13 kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com>:
>>> Sum of multiples of three (3-999), plus multiples of five (5-995),
>>> minus multiples of 15 (15-990). No programming required.
>>>
>>
>> Getting this as one line in Python would be a fun challenge though.
>
> Maybe.  However, considering their educational value, I think the
> problems are unmotivated and the result of doing any problem is almost
> useless.  I think newcomers to programming find externally-motivated
> problems more compelling, especially when the solution is elegant and
> not bogged down in housekeeping or corner cases.
>
> -Steven Bird
>

The Software Association of Oregon, in collaboration with Willamette
University, organizes an annual contest wherein high school teams
compete with each other, and against the clock, on challenges of this
type.  In my experience with this contest, none were using Python
because Python was not yet part of the high school curriculum in
Oregon, except in corner cases.  That was some years ago.

Kirby