[sclug] Linux Apprentice Wanted !

[Jonathan H N Chin]

aeclist wrote:
> There is no suggestion of age. Graduation can and does occur at any
> age. Perhaps you should consider why you see differently? Do you
> yourself believe that graduation is only for the young? How many
> people of all ages do you know well?

You might want to read a book like "how we know what isn't so"
or "inevitable illusions" and learn why relying on personal
experience or gut feelings is no substitute for dispassionately
working through the statistics.

For example, we can calculate from:

    http://www.hesa.ac.uk/Press/sfr56/sfr56.htm

that, between ten and five years ago, about 80% of the students
studied who were enrolled for a first degree were less than
25 years old and about 70% were less than 21 years old, (85%/75%
if one only considers full-time enrolments) with the figures
trending slowly towards even higher proportions of younger
enrolments.

So, being a "recent graduate" appears to be strongly correlated
with being under 30 (assuming, for the sake of argument, that
we define "recent" to be "within five years of graduation" and
that we assume that a reasonable proportion of people who enroll
eventually graduate).


> The mention of recent graduation is clearly because inexperience in
> the job tasks is no problem - the message later includes the offer of
> one to one learning experience in a real world situation. The
> graduation need would make awareness of principles likely, and
> hopefully efficient communication. Good communication would be
> important because the need is to reduce the load on the enquirer, and
> poor communication would be counterproductive.

Can a person who graduated long ago not be inexperienced and
yet able to learn? Is a person who graduated long ago not able
to communicate efficiently or to have an awareness of principles?

Yours is a kind interpretation. However, since this "shorthand"
is clearly open to misinterpretation and considering that
uncontroversial alternative formulations exist, I see no reason
to condone its use.


-jonathan


-- 
Jonathan H N Chin, 2 dan | deputy computer | Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK
<jc254 at newton.cam.ac.uk> | systems mangler | tel/fax: +44 1223 767091/330508

                "respondeo etsi mutabor" --Rosenstock-Huessy