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I love this. Had a project in college that was supposed to be time limited... based on repository times. Oops. Big mistake prof. We rolled back the times on our

I love this. Had a project in college that was supposed to be time limited... based on repository times. Oops. Big mistake prof. We rolled back the times on our repo and laughed maniacally about our free 6 hour extension.

brokentone 11y ago
...then procrastinated for 6 hours. Or is that just me?
WalterBright 11y ago
Should professors really be spending their time locking down all the ways students may try to cheat? At Caltech, proctoring exams (for example) is not allowed by institute policy. A student's honor that he didn't cheat is considered good enough.
- tgb 11y ago
  Why wouldn't you proctor exams? The time spent is small, less than 10 hours a semester, and the proctors can answer student questions or make corrections and clarifications to test questions. That it's a small disincentive to cheat is nice too, though in my experience only the most blatant of cheating would be caught. I say all this as someone who proctors exams.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    The reason was to emphasize that the students were trusted. Sometimes a professor would sit outside in the hall to answer questions, but he would not go in the room. Most of the exams were take-home anyway, and included instructions giving a time limit and what reference material was allowed to be used.
    - ectoplasm 11y ago
      To me this sounds like admin trying to save money. I found some more discussion in a couple places: http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/02/17/cheating-at-caltech/ http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/02/17/cheating-at-caltech/ https://www.quora.com/Are-all-exams-at-Caltech-take-home-exams https://www.quora.com/Are-all-exams-at-Caltech-take-home-exa...
      - WalterBright 11y ago
        That's the first I've heard that it had anything to do with saving money, and I spent 4 years there. It does, however, make life easier for professors and students when you can trust each other. I don't know what Caltech is like today. I attended in 70's, and the honor system was considered sacred by the students. If there were cheaters, they never bragged about it, and I don't know of any. I know one who fell asleep during his takehome exam, woke up and finished it, and so exceeded the time limit. He noted this on the exam. The professor replied back that he was very sorry and was forced to give him an F. The student repeated the (required) class next year. The number of students who did poorly on exams argues that cheating was not widespread. If the culture has changed in the intervening years, that makes me very sad.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        > I don't know what Caltech is like today. I attended in 70's, and the honor system was considered sacred by the students. If there were cheaters, they never bragged about it, and I don't know of any. I (briefly) attended in the early 1990s, and it was the same.
        gertef 11y ago
        > The professor replied back that he was very sorry and was forced to give him an F. The student repeated the (required) class next year. Wow, way to prize process over people. Why not let the student drop the class and just re-take the test next time around? Is Caltech designed to teach science, or train paper-pushers?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Why wouldn't you proctor exams? The time spent is small, less than 10 hours a semester, and the proctors can answer student questions or make corrections and clarifications to test questions. Because Caltech faculty (and, for undergraduate student exams, grad students) have better things to do with their time than proctor exams (and, perhaps more to the point, because Caltech wants to attract faculty and grad students that feel that they have better uses for their time that baby-sitting exams.) And, frankly, like many aspects of the trust extended to Caltech students, its a recruitment policy -- Caltech is an extremely selective, extremely small school that is competing with other elite institutions to attract the best students.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out. > Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out. I'm not saying Caltech is unique in doing that, I'm saying that in the universe Caltech operates in it would conflict with their recruiting interests -- both for faculty and students -- to operate in a different way.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      There's more to it than that. For example, I didn't feel any need to lock my dorm room door when going down the hall to the bathroom, and often never bothered to even close it. I never had anything stolen, nor did anyone else. (Not totally true, there were a couple instances where an outsider came in the unlocked dormitory doors and tried to boost something, but the other students gave chase and caught them.) It's just nicer to live that way. A friend of mine at UT had his room sacked the first week.
- vacri 11y ago
  > A student's honor that he didn't cheat is considered good enough. Individual students certainly can have this integrity, but the demographic as a whole is demonstrably susceptible to cheating. It also offends basic scientific process, in that it suggests that you don't need to bother with trying to make sure your results are robust; instead it relies on someone's word. Why bother having exams, then? Just ask "Do you think you understand the course material properly"?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Individual students certainly can have this integrity, but the demographic as a whole is demonstrably susceptible to cheating. Certainly demonstrably true of a significant portion of the demographic of "college students". Caltech would probably argue that Caltech students are not a representative sample of college students, and that generalization from the more general class to the more specific here is a textbook example of the fallacy of division.
    - vacri 11y ago
      That's a 'begging the question' fallacy, where the conclusion ('Caltech students are more honourable than that') is used as the premise (ditto). Even if we all agree that Caltech students are not representative of college students in general, it doesn't automatically follow that there is no significant degree of cheating.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > That's a 'begging the question' fallacy, where the conclusion ('Caltech students are more honourable than that') is used as the premise (ditto). No, its not. Rejecting the validity of an argument for p is not the same as making an argument for not-p.
        vacri 11y ago
        But that's exactly how you presented their supposed argument: "Caltech students don't cheat because they're not representative of the general student population", with the vague assumption that Caltech students are more honour-bound. Not being representative of a population doesn't give any information about the makeup of the subsample, unless you have more information to add.
- chrisfosterelli 11y ago
  At my school many, many students cheat. This devalues the education that I'm getting and is frustrating to students who actually put in the time to study.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    It devalues your degree, but not your education. Having the confidence that you actually mastered the material is worth a great deal. Stay strong, dude.
    - chrisfosterelli 11y ago
      True. You're right, it only devalues the degree but that's a huge part of the reason that I go to school at all. Much of my education is self taught, and hour-for-hour knowledge-wise I believe my time could be better spent in self-directed learning, but that degree does have value and people who cheat make it worth less to employers and myself. I think it makes sense to try and catch people who abuse that.
      - WalterBright 11y ago
        I understand your feelings on this, but after you've been working for 3 years or so, nobody is going to give a damn about your degree or where you got it. They'll value what you can do, and that's where your education will pay off.
        chrisfosterelli 11y ago
        I'm actually working, and for almost 3 years :) I definitely agree with what you're saying, especially in startups it really isn't that relevant (part of why I like the startup community so much). But I do spend a lot of time outside startups as well, and that glass ceiling is definitely present in large companies and academia (especially academia).
        11y ago
- cegev 11y ago
  That's not the whole story. The student's honor is considered good enough that we shouldn't spend time locking things down, but at least when I interacted more with undergraduates here, Caltech had an investigation process for undergraduate academic dishonesty that was student-run and utterly dysfunctional, apparently involving scenes that would bring to mind the Spanish Inquisition, complete with 2am interrogations and insistence on confessions. I was told of severe disciplinary actions for accusations that were ridiculous when students would not confess, and an administration that stood behind the decisions of students who judged other students more on their opinions than anything else. One student, for example, was apparently expelled for an instance of claimed cheating that would have involved him running back and forth on campus at the speed of a competitive athlete. He quietly returned a short time later, and was also admitted here as a graduate student; there were rumors of legal threats and a settlement. At least when I was hearing more about such things, essentially, Caltech placed tremendous trust in students who were well-liked by particular people, and treated those who were disliked very poorly.
wfunction 11y ago
Your comment basically reads, "I cheated and got away with it, and I'm proud of it too. I'm so awesome! Take that, stupid professor!"
- sergiotapia 11y ago
  Don't hate the programmer, hate the tools. ;)
  - wfunction 11y ago
    Or how about: don't hate the tools; hate the cheaters?
    - sergiotapia 11y ago
      ~ oh you Sweet summer child.
- mikecmpbll 11y ago
  and what is wrong with that?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - philh 11y ago
    Finding the exploit and taking advantage of it are different. "I discovered that if you rip the tags out of a library book, you can just walk out with it and the alarm won't go off!" For some people, that would be a significant "a-ha!" moment. That doesn't mean they should go around stealing library books.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - 11y ago

brokentone 11y ago

...then procrastinated for 6 hours. Or is that just me?

WalterBright 11y ago

Should professors really be spending their time locking down all the ways students may try to cheat? At Caltech, proctoring exams (for example) is not allowed by institute policy. A student's honor that he didn't cheat is considered good enough.

tgb 11y ago
Why wouldn't you proctor exams? The time spent is small, less than 10 hours a semester, and the proctors can answer student questions or make corrections and clarifications to test questions. That it's a small disincentive to cheat is nice too, though in my experience only the most blatant of cheating would be caught. I say all this as someone who proctors exams.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  The reason was to emphasize that the students were trusted. Sometimes a professor would sit outside in the hall to answer questions, but he would not go in the room. Most of the exams were take-home anyway, and included instructions giving a time limit and what reference material was allowed to be used.
  - ectoplasm 11y ago
    To me this sounds like admin trying to save money. I found some more discussion in a couple places: http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/02/17/cheating-at-caltech/ http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/02/17/cheating-at-caltech/ https://www.quora.com/Are-all-exams-at-Caltech-take-home-exams https://www.quora.com/Are-all-exams-at-Caltech-take-home-exa...
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      That's the first I've heard that it had anything to do with saving money, and I spent 4 years there. It does, however, make life easier for professors and students when you can trust each other. I don't know what Caltech is like today. I attended in 70's, and the honor system was considered sacred by the students. If there were cheaters, they never bragged about it, and I don't know of any. I know one who fell asleep during his takehome exam, woke up and finished it, and so exceeded the time limit. He noted this on the exam. The professor replied back that he was very sorry and was forced to give him an F. The student repeated the (required) class next year. The number of students who did poorly on exams argues that cheating was not widespread. If the culture has changed in the intervening years, that makes me very sad.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > I don't know what Caltech is like today. I attended in 70's, and the honor system was considered sacred by the students. If there were cheaters, they never bragged about it, and I don't know of any. I (briefly) attended in the early 1990s, and it was the same.
      - gertef 11y ago
        > The professor replied back that he was very sorry and was forced to give him an F. The student repeated the (required) class next year. Wow, way to prize process over people. Why not let the student drop the class and just re-take the test next time around? Is Caltech designed to teach science, or train paper-pushers?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Why wouldn't you proctor exams? The time spent is small, less than 10 hours a semester, and the proctors can answer student questions or make corrections and clarifications to test questions. Because Caltech faculty (and, for undergraduate student exams, grad students) have better things to do with their time than proctor exams (and, perhaps more to the point, because Caltech wants to attract faculty and grad students that feel that they have better uses for their time that baby-sitting exams.) And, frankly, like many aspects of the trust extended to Caltech students, its a recruitment policy -- Caltech is an extremely selective, extremely small school that is competing with other elite institutions to attract the best students.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out. > Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out. I'm not saying Caltech is unique in doing that, I'm saying that in the universe Caltech operates in it would conflict with their recruiting interests -- both for faculty and students -- to operate in a different way.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    There's more to it than that. For example, I didn't feel any need to lock my dorm room door when going down the hall to the bathroom, and often never bothered to even close it. I never had anything stolen, nor did anyone else. (Not totally true, there were a couple instances where an outsider came in the unlocked dormitory doors and tried to boost something, but the other students gave chase and caught them.) It's just nicer to live that way. A friend of mine at UT had his room sacked the first week.
vacri 11y ago
> A student's honor that he didn't cheat is considered good enough. Individual students certainly can have this integrity, but the demographic as a whole is demonstrably susceptible to cheating. It also offends basic scientific process, in that it suggests that you don't need to bother with trying to make sure your results are robust; instead it relies on someone's word. Why bother having exams, then? Just ask "Do you think you understand the course material properly"?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Individual students certainly can have this integrity, but the demographic as a whole is demonstrably susceptible to cheating. Certainly demonstrably true of a significant portion of the demographic of "college students". Caltech would probably argue that Caltech students are not a representative sample of college students, and that generalization from the more general class to the more specific here is a textbook example of the fallacy of division.
  - vacri 11y ago
    That's a 'begging the question' fallacy, where the conclusion ('Caltech students are more honourable than that') is used as the premise (ditto). Even if we all agree that Caltech students are not representative of college students in general, it doesn't automatically follow that there is no significant degree of cheating.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > That's a 'begging the question' fallacy, where the conclusion ('Caltech students are more honourable than that') is used as the premise (ditto). No, its not. Rejecting the validity of an argument for p is not the same as making an argument for not-p.
      - vacri 11y ago
        But that's exactly how you presented their supposed argument: "Caltech students don't cheat because they're not representative of the general student population", with the vague assumption that Caltech students are more honour-bound. Not being representative of a population doesn't give any information about the makeup of the subsample, unless you have more information to add.
chrisfosterelli 11y ago
At my school many, many students cheat. This devalues the education that I'm getting and is frustrating to students who actually put in the time to study.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  It devalues your degree, but not your education. Having the confidence that you actually mastered the material is worth a great deal. Stay strong, dude.
  - chrisfosterelli 11y ago
    True. You're right, it only devalues the degree but that's a huge part of the reason that I go to school at all. Much of my education is self taught, and hour-for-hour knowledge-wise I believe my time could be better spent in self-directed learning, but that degree does have value and people who cheat make it worth less to employers and myself. I think it makes sense to try and catch people who abuse that.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      I understand your feelings on this, but after you've been working for 3 years or so, nobody is going to give a damn about your degree or where you got it. They'll value what you can do, and that's where your education will pay off.
      - chrisfosterelli 11y ago
        I'm actually working, and for almost 3 years :) I definitely agree with what you're saying, especially in startups it really isn't that relevant (part of why I like the startup community so much). But I do spend a lot of time outside startups as well, and that glass ceiling is definitely present in large companies and academia (especially academia).
        11y ago
cegev 11y ago
That's not the whole story. The student's honor is considered good enough that we shouldn't spend time locking things down, but at least when I interacted more with undergraduates here, Caltech had an investigation process for undergraduate academic dishonesty that was student-run and utterly dysfunctional, apparently involving scenes that would bring to mind the Spanish Inquisition, complete with 2am interrogations and insistence on confessions. I was told of severe disciplinary actions for accusations that were ridiculous when students would not confess, and an administration that stood behind the decisions of students who judged other students more on their opinions than anything else. One student, for example, was apparently expelled for an instance of claimed cheating that would have involved him running back and forth on campus at the speed of a competitive athlete. He quietly returned a short time later, and was also admitted here as a graduate student; there were rumors of legal threats and a settlement. At least when I was hearing more about such things, essentially, Caltech placed tremendous trust in students who were well-liked by particular people, and treated those who were disliked very poorly.

wfunction 11y ago

Your comment basically reads, "I cheated and got away with it, and I'm proud of it too. I'm so awesome! Take that, stupid professor!"

sergiotapia 11y ago
Don't hate the programmer, hate the tools. ;)
- wfunction 11y ago
  Or how about: don't hate the tools; hate the cheaters?
  - sergiotapia 11y ago
    ~ oh you Sweet summer child.
mikecmpbll 11y ago
and what is wrong with that?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- philh 11y ago
  Finding the exploit and taking advantage of it are different. "I discovered that if you rip the tags out of a library book, you can just walk out with it and the alarm won't go off!" For some people, that would be a significant "a-ha!" moment. That doesn't mean they should go around stealing library books.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - 11y ago