3 ms·
> It is an official procedure that in the case of results on the edge, the person marking should mark an ambiguous score in the favour of the student. The funn
by gwd 7y ago
> It is an official procedure that in the case of results on the edge, the person marking should mark an ambiguous score in the favour of the student.
The funny thing about the "almost there" argument is that what it means is the actual line is more fuzzy, but a bit lower. That is, if the "official" cut-of is 30, and teachers are willing to "find an extra point" for people with scores of 28 and 29 but not 27, then the actual cut-off is 27.
I had a prof at uni who for programming projects would say: "The deadline is 6pm on Friday. But there's a 6-hour grace period where you're allowed to be late." Inevitably someone in the class would say, "Doesn't that mean that the actual deadline is at midnight?" To which he would respond, "Yes, of course. But if someone submits a project at 12:01 and it's rejected, when they say 'But I was only 1 minute late!', I can say, 'No, you were 6 hours late.'"
- stared 7y agoOn conference deadlines and application times, there are some plots: https://p.migdal.pl/2017/11/15/after-pydata-warsaw-2017.html#sign-up-and-check-in-times https://p.migdal.pl/2017/11/15/after-pydata-warsaw-2017.html... It is interesting when there are a few deadlines (e.g. early bird, regular, last call).
- jcranmer 7y agoWhen I was a TA, the rule for homework assignments was that they were due at midnight, with a grace period chosen per-assignment of 1 to 6 hours, undisclosed to students. Alas, I could only choose the grace period on 5 minute increments, so I couldn't pick a time like 3:13. The grace period I set for the hardest homework assignment was 1:05--probably cut off a few people who were hoping to extend a two-week assignment by 3 or 4 hours.
- gwd 7y agoAfter reading about human beings' natural tendency to "anchor" on things like the next 100-point ELO rating, that probably a better way of doing things would be to say it was due at midnight, but there was a 10-minute grace period. people naturally will tend to aim for midnight, regardless of whether it's a hard deadline or not. IOW, my professor's insight that there had to be a hard deadline somewhere was correct. But he missed the fact that not all hard deadlines are equal: a hard deadline that is 10 minutes past a natural "anchor" is much easier for anchor-prone humans to meet than a hard deadline right on a natural "anchor". Which is a bit strange, because the official university policy with regard to scheduling actually already took into account this natural anchoring: It was official policy that if a schedule said 10:00-11:00, the class was actually 10:10-11:00. The idea being that it's much easer for the "hard end" of a class to be at 11:00 than 10:50.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoI'm glad my uni didn't have things like homework. Physics at Exeter 74 to 77 had tutorials instead, if you didn't complete the work in time your tutor might grumble but the grumble had no impact because the class of one's degree depended only on the finals and the final year project report/dissertation. Of course not finishing the work quite likely had some impact on your ability to perform in the finals!