June 17, 2013 at 8:19 am
Can't wait for some junior programmer to come to me with this query and claim that SQL Server is 'broken' because the it returns the wrong data for the 'Name' column. At least I got to think this one thru without said programmmer's manager on the phone demanding I open a support inceident with Microsoft 🙂
June 17, 2013 at 1:13 pm
Straight up useful question.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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June 17, 2013 at 6:02 pm
Mike Dougherty-384281 (6/17/2013)
I assumed "run successfully" meant "returns what it looks like it should" rather than "without error"
That's what I hope a tester/QA man verifying that SQL Server is doing what it is specified to do would mean by "run successfully", but for someone who is not employed by MS in that rôle it seems an unusual take - not an unreasonable one, but definitely unusual. Like all words/phrases/sentences what it means depends on who is speaking an on in what context they are using it. I may be wrong, but I doubt if the number of people who interpreted the phrase that way was large enough to have any effect on the numbers selecting each option when those numbers are rounded to the nearest one per cent of total responses, as in the statistics shown for QOTD.
Tom
June 18, 2013 at 1:09 am
nice and easy one. 🙂
Thanks
Vinay Kumar
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June 18, 2013 at 3:10 am
Perhaps some of the terms used in these questions could be standardised in editing. I'd suggest that 'runs without error' is less ambiguous in this case, but if 'runs successfully' was used consistently there would be fewer 'excuses' ;-). We already have some basic ground rules, eg the syntax can't be assumed to be correct for SQL Server 2005.
I'd also suggest that, in this case, something like 'Select all the correct statements' would provide fewer clues than 'Select the correct three' and make this question more interesting.
June 18, 2013 at 4:42 am
Nice and simple.....
June 18, 2013 at 7:27 am
I have made the mistake of missing a comma one to many times. 😀
June 18, 2013 at 8:55 am
Mike Is Here (6/18/2013)
I have made the mistake of missing a comma one to many times. 😀
+1
June 19, 2013 at 12:25 am
June 19, 2013 at 10:43 am
Nice and easy. I'm guessing the 29% who missed it skimmed it too fast? My only critique is that with 3 correct choices out of 4, it made it a little too easy in my opinion. Although it is nice to have one that you don't have to think too hard about now and then!
June 20, 2013 at 5:56 pm
With 3 correct choices out of 4, I'd phrase it "Which statement would NOT run correctly" and dispense with multiple choices. /nitpick
An easy question. I always use AS when I intend to alias a column, and it's not like I ever accidentally deleted a comma and ended up with one too few columns. :hehe:
June 24, 2013 at 11:18 am
L' Eomot Inversé (6/17/2013)
Richard Warr (6/17/2013)
I wonder how 28 % got it wrong...
As only 6% selected the wrong answer it must be down to not selecting three options. If you don't read the question you won't get the point 😉
That's right. since you comment it's got worse.
Now we have 10% who selected the wrong option. As 30% got it wrong, that means 20% of people who answered selected the wrong number of options but not the wrong option, so selecting too few options was a much bigger cause of failure than selecting the wrong option. The number of answers selected is about 275% of the number of attempts, so on average people selected two and three quarter answers. About 9% of people selected both the 1st option and the third option (the incorrect option), so it seems likely that some of those 10% selected all four options, so the people not selecting the wrong option may have contributed more than two thirds of the 30% deficit in number of options selected; as option 4 had lot fewer ticks than the other correct options, I would guess that about 10% and 20% of people selected only 2 options and some more selected only 1 option.
It's a nice question, very simple and straightforward, and the number getting it wrong is rather surprising. 20% getting it wrong because they didn't bother to read the question properly is pretty sad, but not really surprising; 10% not knowing the syntax of an extremely simple select statement is amazing.
Nice number crunching there, Tom! Especially impressive if you did you it all in your head and were as fast as it appears to someone who's reading the result.
June 24, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Primo Dang (6/24/2013)
Nice number crunching there, Tom! Especially impressive if you did you it all in your head and were as fast as it appears to someone who's reading the result.
Don't be too impressed, for two reasons: firstly, because I was a professional mathematician way back when, before I turned into a computer scientist; secondly because although it didn't take me much time to do the sums it took me much more time to work out how to express them somewhere near clearly than the impression given by the finished text might suggest.
Tom
June 26, 2013 at 12:31 am
Was an EZ PZ QOTD. 🙂
June 27, 2013 at 10:36 pm
Those who assumed something from the title... remember when you assume what it makes out of "u" and "me"... 🙂
Most of you also assumed that "running correctly" meant the same thing as "running without error". But doesn't the meaning of running correctly depend also on the desired outcome?
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