In my top-level coment I asked: How (in)correct are the other answers? I-am-not-a-bioinformatics-programmer.
As a variation, how many other questions do you not like?
http://rosalind.info/problems/hamm/ computes the Hamming distance between two strings, using the simplification that only point mutations are important. This is of course not a true reflection of the science behind comparing two DNA strings.
Do you therefore also not like that question? Which others don't you like, because of simplifications they don't explain?
As an education tool, is it not useful to discard complexity in the process of bootstraping towards the full details?
> A lie-to-children (plural lies-to-children) is a simplified explanation of technical or complex subjects as a teaching method for children and laypeople. The technique has been incorporated by academics within the fields of biology, evolution, bioinformatics and the social sciences.
As a variation, how many other questions do you not like?
http://rosalind.info/problems/hamm/ computes the Hamming distance between two strings, using the simplification that only point mutations are important. This is of course not a true reflection of the science behind comparing two DNA strings.
Do you therefore also not like that question? Which others don't you like, because of simplifications they don't explain?
As an education tool, is it not useful to discard complexity in the process of bootstraping towards the full details?
Ha! I had heard the phrase "lie-to-children" before, which seemed relevant to this thread. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children says:
> A lie-to-children (plural lies-to-children) is a simplified explanation of technical or complex subjects as a teaching method for children and laypeople. The technique has been incorporated by academics within the fields of biology, evolution, bioinformatics and the social sciences.