Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
valuable processor cycles in scientifi c and engineering applications had
no place in the corporate environment, which privileged legibility and
ease of maintenance over performance.
50
Not surprisingly, scientifi c pro-
grammers scored better on PAT than business programmers.
51
The relevance of mathematical aptitude to programming ability
remained, and still does, a perennial question in the industry. At least
one study of programmers identifi ed no signifi cant difference in perfor-
mance between those with a background in science or engineering and
those who studied humanities or the social sciences.
52
Even the authors
of IBM PAT concluded that at best, mathematical ability was associated
with particular applications and not programming ability in general.
53
Some observers went so far as to suggest that by privileging mathe-
matical aptitude, PAT was downright pathological, selecting for “a type
of logical mind which . . . is not very often supported by maturity or
reasoned thinking ability.”
54
As a result, these selection processes tended
to segregate individuals whose personality traits made it diffi cult to
cooperate with management and fellow employees. At the very least, the
mathematical mind-set frequently precluded the kinds of complex solu-
tions typical of business programming applications.
As will be described in more detail in chapter 5, the emerging disci-
pline of computer science, in its own quest for academic respectability,
continued to emphasize mathematics, while industry leaders regularly
dismissed it as irrelevant.
55
For the time being, it is enough to note
that the continuing controversy over mathematics refl ected deeper dis-
agreement, or at least ambiguity, about the true nature of programming
ability.
The larger question, of course, was whether or not scores on PAT
corresponded with real-world programming performance. On this ques-
tion the data are ambiguous. Most employers did not even attempt to
correlate test scores with objective measures of performance such as
supervisor ratings.
56
The small percentage that did concluded that there
was no relationship between PAT scores and programming performance
at all, at least in the context of business programming.
57
At best, these
studies identifi ed a small correlation between PAT scores and
academic
success in training programs
. Few argued that such correlations trans-
lated into accurate indicators of future success in the workplace.
58
Even
IBM recommended that PAT be used only in the context of a larger
personnel screening process.
Over the course of the next decade, there were several attempts to
recalibrate the tests to make them more directly relevant to real-world
