[Year 12 IT Apps] Short Answer Q9

Thu Nov 12 18:31:10 EST 2009

I'm sorry but the pedant in me just can't let this one go.

I agree that in the context of a spreadsheet 'returned' or 'displayed' are 
pretty much interchangeable.
But, I can see how a student who has programming experience might misread 
this, and I agree with Colin's student. In the context of programming the IF 
returns "HOORAY" not HOORAY and it has nothing to do with internal 
representation:
First, a function that returns a value does just that. What happens to that 
value is not the function's concern; it may be displayed, it may be written 
to a file, it may be used in a calculation
Second, it is a well established convention that a machine-independent 
representation of a string literal is to place the characters inside 
quatation marks (single or double). This distiguishes HOORAY - an identifier 
in a program - from "HOORAY" - a collection of characters, or it 
distinguishes 100 - a number - from "100" - a collection of characters.
So a function that returns 'HOORAY" is returning something different from a 
function that returns HOORAY.
How the internals of the software or hardware actually represent any of this 
internally is largely irrelevant.

Regards
Robert T-A
Brighton SC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kelly" <kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>
To: "Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List" 
<itapps at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 9:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] Short Answer Q9

>I fear it's just another case of less-than-perfect wording.  They probably 
>should have said "displayed" rather than "returned" but I guess they never 
>thought that students could misinterpret it.
>
> Besides, if they really meant 'returned' as in a function's return value 
> before it's displayed, they would be violating the ITA study design. Only 
> Software Development would cover that.
>
> The only people who know how Excel internally represents text before it's 
> displayed are Microsoft programmers.
>
> It would surely not be stored in RAM with ASCII double quotes fore and 
> aft. In my old days of assembly language, strings were stored as raw 
> (ASCII) bytes and interpreted as a string because the programmer knows the 
> data is meant to be a string.  And in C, strings are represented as an 
> array of ASCII bytes with a pointer to its starting point in RAM and (as 
> far as I remember) a zero byte terminator.
>
> No double quotes.
>
> As a wise man said: "If a string returns in the RAM, but no-one's running 
> a trace program, does it make double quotes?"
>
> Colin SUTTON wrote:
>> Hi all
>>
>> A very able programming student (he won Swingame and writes Java code on 
>> the whiteboard for amusement!) sent me this:
>> ***************************************
>> Hi Mr Sutton,
>>
>> I have come with a dispute. Question 9 in the multiple choice.
>>
>> "
>> Typing the formula =IF(D12<D6,"HOORAY"," ") in D13 returns
>> A. HOORAY
>> B. NO MONEY LEFT OVER
>> C. ""
>> D. "HOORAY"
>>
>> Answer is A.
>>
>> Using the data provided, D12 (total March income) is 1400+150+800 = 
>> $2350. D6 is 2500+30+20 = $2550.
>>
>> Plugging those figures into the formula gives =IF(2350<2550,"HOORAY"," 
>> ").
>> Since 2350 is less than 2550, the 'true' condition of the IF is 
>> calculated: the literal text /Hooray./
>> There are no double quotes displayed in the cell, so it's not D."
>>
>> The question asks what is returned by the statement, not what is 
>> displayed. I wrote this on the examination paper indicating the 
>> difference and the wording, so this answer in my opinion is wrong. The 
>> value it returns is a string, hence the quotes, but a string is displayed 
>> in a cell omits the quotation marks, but the question does not state 
>> "what is displayed" but rather "what is returned".
>>
>> Hopefully you can return some light to this.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Josh
>>
>> *******************************************
>> My reply:
>> Hi Josh
>>
>> My response is also A.
>>
>> The STRING    HOORAY   is returned.
>>
>> You TELL Excel the value for the true is the string HOORAY by typing (and 
>> displaying in the formula)  "HOORAY".
>>
>> However, I can see your interpretation, but I think the RETURN is 
>> HOORAY - a string. Our CONVENTION is to use the "....".
>>
>> However, writing on the paper is probably a COMPLETE waste of time.
>>
>> Anyone with thier ideas?
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> COLIN
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>
> -- 
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> McKinnon Secondary College
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