lab 2.04 hint considered harmful #418
Description
Discussed in #328
Originally posted by jdonwells February 3, 2022
I don't think this is going to work for most students.
The food quiz program uses what looks like a single level neural net. I like that idea even though it isn't presented as such.
The problem is with the hint. "Hint: Use a search engine to look up an efficient way to find the largest number in a Python list." If you actually do that you will find loops and sorting. They don't know how to use loops and using the sort function won't work because the food names and ratings are in different lists. That takes it to another level.
Looking at the given example code we see the use of for loops to solve a different though similar problem.
The way to solve this with what they currently know is to create a long if elif... else statement that looks for the maximum votes. We can do that with a fixed 6 choices. So 5 comparisons will always work. No loop needed, just a bad habit that we reinforce with the Zork project. (But that is a different issue.)
So get rid of the hint. Most students will be confused and waste time looking for a solution that isn't there.