The PL/SQL Challenge (www.plsqlchallenge.com) offers a daily quiz on the PL/SQL language, through which thousands of Oracle technologists demonstrate and deepen their knowledge of PL/SQL. This blog contains posts by the PL/SQL Challenge founder, Steven Feuerstein, as well as comments from players.
14 August 2010
Rescoring performed for 13 August Quiz on INDICES OF BETWEEN (1330)
The 13 August quiz asked you to answer this question:
"Which of the following statements regarding the BETWEEN clause of the INDICES OF feature are true?"
We scored the following choice as correct:
"The values in the BETWEEN clause can be any valid PLS_INTEGER value."
Several players, led by Sergey P., objected, pointing out that you could use, for example, 1.5 (which is clearly not a PLS_INTEGER value) for either of the expressions in the BETWEEN clause.
Oracle would not raise an issue, it would simply implicitly convert this number into an integer and then use it to execute the FORALL statement.
My first reaction to this was: yes, it is true, that you can in fact supply any expression in BETWEEN that can be evaluated to a PLS_INTEGER. But the choice only states that the values "can be" any valid PLS_INTEGER value. This statement is undoubtedly true. You can use any PLS_INTEGER value, and you can also use other values that implicitly convert to a PLS_INTEGER value.
So I could stand by my original scoring; from a linguistic standpoint, I am correct. The PL/SQL Challenge is not, however, about the English language. It is about Oracle and PL/SQL technologies. So I have decided to rescore answers to this question, so that even if you did not mark this choice as correct, you will receive credit.
I will also change the text of this choice to remove this ambiguity in the future.
Sigh...I was just about to post a note on the blog expressing deep satisfaction that we had gone over two weeks without any need to adjust scores (that is, we published quizzes without errors). Well, I can't do that, but I can express joy that the quality of the quizzes have improved dramatically since Darryl Hurley and Ken Holmslykke agreed to become reviewers of my quizzes. May thanks to Darryl and Ken!
And, finally, congratulations to Sergey for winning his choice of an O'Reilly Media ebook for being the first player to point out this issue.
Oh and one other thing: a player wrote to say that "I think that if a value is specified in the BETWEEN clause, it must be a literal." This is not the case, as you can see by putting together a test script or running the code I included in my answer text.
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To be honest I do not see any reasons for re-scoring here. If the choice would be formulated so "The lower value in the BETWEEN clause can be 1" - would you consider re-scoring in favor of players that would not select it? I doubt so.
ReplyDeleteThe choice was absolutely unambiguous, to interpret it as Sergey P. did it shall be written either "... can be any PLS_INTEGER value - and only such values" or "shall be a PLS_INTEGER value, any such value is permitted".
Thanks, al0. I agree that it was not strictly speaking necessary. I guess I was just in a generous sort of mood - and I don't want players to get caught up in (and possibly discouraged by) linguistic hair-splitting.
ReplyDeleteThis quiz, as it was originally presented and scored, was neither ambiguous nor erroneous. The argument that expressions which are not of type PLS_INTEGER could be used in the BETWEEN clause does not alter the fact that PLS_INTEGER values can be used. This argument is fundamentally the same as one that was presented (and rejected) in response to the recent quiz regarding INSTR. In both cases it is the completeness, not the accuracy, being challenged. The rationale for rejecting the INSTR challenge was that a choice is not incorrect solely for not completely describing a feature. The decision taken for the BETWEEN clause case is inconsistent with that taken for the INSTR case.
ReplyDeleteRescoring should be reserved for instances where a quiz is ambiguous or contains errors that can reasonably be expected to influence players’ choices. In this case the semantics of the original quiz were clear. The difference between must and can is not one of "linguistic hair-splitting." Ignoring that difference and accepting Sergey P.’s challenge rewards specious argument and diminishes the efforts of those who responded correctly.
A choice should be considered correct if it does not contain false statements and does not conflict with the details of the question. Extending this standard to require complete description of the topic feature would make it nearly impossible to formulate meaningful options with other than concrete code examples since players could likely identify some aspect of the feature that was omitted (similar to challenging when an intended correct choice includes "always" or "never" as part of its phrasing).
I agree with al0 and jhall62, there was nothing wrong with the question.
ReplyDelete