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When I was in college around Y2K, I took a "Foundations of Music" class offered online- an elective that taught, well, foundations of music, specifically how to

When I was in college around Y2K, I took a "Foundations of Music" class offered online- an elective that taught, well, foundations of music, specifically how to read music. Students had to install this janky, low-quality, Windows Visual Basic application and do 100% of the coursework using it. This VB app would output a results file, and then we had to upload it to the professor. Well, I edited the file, and found that it had a primitive CSV-like format where right answers were basically question1=1 and wrong answers were question1=0. So theoretically, I could have just generated answer files for every single lesson for the whole semester- and a lot of them I did. BUT, I was scared that the final exam was going to be conducted on-campus, where it would be less tenable to be a dirty-rotten-cheating-scumbag. So I actually had to learn the coursework, and learn how to read music and all its intricacies. (I do not play an instrument unless you count guitar chords.) When the final exam came, instead of it being on-campus, the professor used the EXACT SAME VB application to run it. It took me about 5 minutes and I scored a 100% on it thanks to notepad.exe. There's a moral to this story somewhere. I use notepad.exe a lot more these days than I read music, so perhaps it was foreshadowing an IT career?

Smithalicious 7y ago
A moral of the story is that people will optimize for what's being measured, not what is intended. Machine learning does this even more so, with hilarious results.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Yup. Another example of this is when I was in college and other students would go on ratemyprofessor or look up grade distributions for different professors and class options to pick the easiest ones. The thought of, you know, actually learning something even if it was hard wasn’t even a consideration - they just wanted the GPA. This continues in the working world as well, unfortunately. Many employees will optimize behaviors and attention to what’s most likely to get them a bonus or promotion regardless of how damaging it is to other people, users, or the company long term.
  - tombert 7y ago
    The "choosing the easy professor path" always bothered me too; I always felt that it was stupid to go to college just to get the receipt, so I purposefully didn't do the ratemyprofessor thing, though now I almost wish I had, since I ended up on academic probation and eventually dropping out...though that might have less to do with my class selection and more to do with me spending most of my time playing Minecraft, upon reflection. I think good companies (which are incredibly rare) will figure out how to make the behaviors that get people bonuses and/or promoted coincide with the ones that are good for the company long-term. Sadly, it doesn't seem to happen that way too frequently.
    - really3452 7y ago
      I would use rate my professor to make sure that I didn't end up with an over-the-top difficult general class that I didn't really care about but needed to fulfill a requirement (Art history, public speaking, etc). That way I could optimize my study time to focus on in-major classes.
    - michannne 7y ago
      It all depends on your goal of going to college. Do you have ad-hoc self-taught and real world experience doing your major? Then you may just want a paper to show your employer. No clue about anything in your field and want to learn? Then having intense classes should be your end goal. Everyone has different reasons for attending college, at the end of the day a lot of students forget that they're only there for themselves and no one outside of their classroom will care much about what they did in it.
    - speedyapoc 7y ago
      Small anecdote: I always did worse in college with professors or courses that were looked at as “easy” because I was not motivated to put in effort. Courses that were looked at as hard or professors that were rated as tough tended to make me “respect the class” and subsequently do better and learn more.
  - spike021 7y ago
    That's not the only thing ratemyprofessor is useful for. Everyone has different learning styles. In college I did super well learning outside of class when needed, but being able to narrow down the professors to the ones I knew would be compatible with my in-class learning style was better than nothing.
zaroth 7y ago
That was probably technically wire fraud, but an interesting story no less. Not to worry, the statute of limitations is 5 years. (IANAL)
filoleg 7y ago
Had a similar thing at my college. If you are trying to take a language class, you need to take an online test to examine your current level of knowledge of the language, so that they can put you in an appropriate class level (i.e., basically allowing you to test out of beginner level classes, if you have enough knowledge to take the more advanced ones). I found out that all the correct answers were basically encoded into the front-end HTML, so it looked something like "return question1.result === "XYZ". While the value of cheating on such a test is extremely dubious (you do not get any credit on your transcript for the beginner classes if you tested out of them), I thought it was interesting nonetheless.
gabcoh 7y ago
Almost the exact same situation with a music app when I was in high school. It would record you play a piece of music and then grade how many notes you got right. It would literally just save your grade into a SQLite database that you could manipulate before uploading to your teacher.
will4274 7y ago
I have a similar story. 7th grade, online science test, multiple choice and essay answers. When you click submit for the test, it shows you (in a javascript alert window) "you got X/Y correct. your essays have been submitted" and then POSTs to another page (which submits the essay). After I saw this on the first assignment, I had an idea. On the second assignment, i turned off my internet, and it still told me how many i got right and wrong, but then 404ed when it submitted my essay. So then, I modified my answers until I got them all right, plugged my internet back in, and submitted the multiple choice and essays, now with all the multiple choice answers correct.

Smithalicious 7y ago

A moral of the story is that people will optimize for what's being measured, not what is intended. Machine learning does this even more so, with hilarious results.

mdorazio 7y ago
Yup. Another example of this is when I was in college and other students would go on ratemyprofessor or look up grade distributions for different professors and class options to pick the easiest ones. The thought of, you know, actually learning something even if it was hard wasn’t even a consideration - they just wanted the GPA. This continues in the working world as well, unfortunately. Many employees will optimize behaviors and attention to what’s most likely to get them a bonus or promotion regardless of how damaging it is to other people, users, or the company long term.
- tombert 7y ago
  The "choosing the easy professor path" always bothered me too; I always felt that it was stupid to go to college just to get the receipt, so I purposefully didn't do the ratemyprofessor thing, though now I almost wish I had, since I ended up on academic probation and eventually dropping out...though that might have less to do with my class selection and more to do with me spending most of my time playing Minecraft, upon reflection. I think good companies (which are incredibly rare) will figure out how to make the behaviors that get people bonuses and/or promoted coincide with the ones that are good for the company long-term. Sadly, it doesn't seem to happen that way too frequently.
  - really3452 7y ago
    I would use rate my professor to make sure that I didn't end up with an over-the-top difficult general class that I didn't really care about but needed to fulfill a requirement (Art history, public speaking, etc). That way I could optimize my study time to focus on in-major classes.
  - michannne 7y ago
    It all depends on your goal of going to college. Do you have ad-hoc self-taught and real world experience doing your major? Then you may just want a paper to show your employer. No clue about anything in your field and want to learn? Then having intense classes should be your end goal. Everyone has different reasons for attending college, at the end of the day a lot of students forget that they're only there for themselves and no one outside of their classroom will care much about what they did in it.
  - speedyapoc 7y ago
    Small anecdote: I always did worse in college with professors or courses that were looked at as “easy” because I was not motivated to put in effort. Courses that were looked at as hard or professors that were rated as tough tended to make me “respect the class” and subsequently do better and learn more.
- spike021 7y ago
  That's not the only thing ratemyprofessor is useful for. Everyone has different learning styles. In college I did super well learning outside of class when needed, but being able to narrow down the professors to the ones I knew would be compatible with my in-class learning style was better than nothing.

zaroth 7y ago

That was probably technically wire fraud, but an interesting story no less. Not to worry, the statute of limitations is 5 years. (IANAL)

filoleg 7y ago

Had a similar thing at my college. If you are trying to take a language class, you need to take an online test to examine your current level of knowledge of the language, so that they can put you in an appropriate class level (i.e., basically allowing you to test out of beginner level classes, if you have enough knowledge to take the more advanced ones). I found out that all the correct answers were basically encoded into the front-end HTML, so it looked something like "return question1.result === "XYZ". While the value of cheating on such a test is extremely dubious (you do not get any credit on your transcript for the beginner classes if you tested out of them), I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

gabcoh 7y ago

Almost the exact same situation with a music app when I was in high school. It would record you play a piece of music and then grade how many notes you got right. It would literally just save your grade into a SQLite database that you could manipulate before uploading to your teacher.

will4274 7y ago

I have a similar story. 7th grade, online science test, multiple choice and essay answers. When you click submit for the test, it shows you (in a javascript alert window) "you got X/Y correct. your essays have been submitted" and then POSTs to another page (which submits the essay). After I saw this on the first assignment, I had an idea. On the second assignment, i turned off my internet, and it still told me how many i got right and wrong, but then 404ed when it submitted my essay. So then, I modified my answers until I got them all right, plugged my internet back in, and submitted the multiple choice and essays, now with all the multiple choice answers correct.