Quote from KenderFeb 13, 2011 - 09:28:43
I do not think that the Math section of this site should count for WeChall.
All it takes to solve is spending time entering the "problems" into a math program.
Getting ~12000 points for a few hours of brainless work has no place on WeChall imho..
Respectfully, I don't agree.
For some people, background and training or just natural talent, might make some of the challenges exceptionally easy, but that is going to be the case with any category of challenge. A professional pentester will probably find the web/exploit challenges easy. An assembly programmer will probably have an easy time with the crackits, for example.
How easy the math section is depends very much on your math background. I have almost none. The highest formal math training I've had is first year (college) calculus class. That's it. Minimal statistics. Minimal probability. Minimal trigonometry. And zero formal computer science, as well. The easier, basic algebra ones I walked through without much effort, but I had to learn a lot to solve some of the others. You can't just plug the problems into a math program if you don't know what you are doing.
Then there is the math program itself. I used maxima for the number crunching, but when I started CST I had no idea how maxima, or any other CAS, worked. Having no high level math background, I'd never had a need for nor ever been exposed to such applications. Now, I'm not bad with maxima and also with its internal scripting system, but these are both things I had to learn to solve the challenges.
So, again. I don't agree. I think the math section deserves to be scored. It was not brainless for me. I can look at a MySQL query and tell you just about anything you want to know, but for the 20 or so people I work with, all in non-computer science positions, they may as well be looking at Linear A. I don't think that brainless for me means brainless for them.