Generalized Concrete Nonsense, or Why We Teach Factually Wrong Things

Irregular Impression:

So, what is the problem I am talking about? It is really very simple, yet totally unexpected and shocking. It is that a lot of university course material, at least in the field of information technology and computer science, contains significant amounts of factually wrong assertions presented as facts to the unsuspecting students.

In fact, “significant” puts it very mildly. The lecture slides I’ve encountered today contain several capital errors, frequently two or three of them per slide. In order to illustrate the seriousness of these mistakes, I am quoting some actual phrases, definitions and assertions found in the slides in question (translated to English, since the original material is written in Hungarian) that I have encountered.