3 ms·

Funny story, I was a huge fan boi of Feynman's and read everything I could about him. I used this technique to integrate the "extra credit" problem on my freshm

Funny story, I was a huge fan boi of Feynman's and read everything I could about him. I used this technique to integrate the "extra credit" problem on my freshman final, which I turned in with about 20 minutes to spare, and the professor accused me of cheating by knowing the answer ahead of time. When I showed him the steps and explained the origins he allowed that perhaps I hadn't cheated, but was disappointed I had used a technique that wasn't taught in class so that was somewhat unfair to the other students. Not my best professor.

bongoman37 5y ago
How is knowing the answer 'cheating' by any stretch of that word?
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  The assertion was that I had somehow acquired the answers to the test before I took the test. The evidence for that, flimsy as it was, was that I finished the test "too quickly to have done the work." Getting the answers before the test was the alleged cheating.
regularfry 5y ago
What was frustrating to me, in the days before this sort of thing was all over YouTube, was reading that Feynman had a magical technique in biographies and so on, but not being able to find any reference to what the damn trick was.
acchow 5y ago
> When I showed him the steps and explained the origins Did you not put the steps on the paper you submitted?
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  Not enough apparently. But to be fair, as a freshman in a college calculus class that was essentially reviewing what I had already done in high school I was kind of an asshole. I skipped a lot of his classes and often did the formulaic questions in my head and just wrote down the answer. I don't recommend this approach.
aidenn0 5y ago
I've only ever been accused of cheating once[1]; which is perhaps surprising given my poor study habits and high test scores. It probably helps that I tend towards a fairly deliberate pace on my tests so I was rarely done super-early. 1: That one time was not even in school; when I graduated I applied to OCS, and the recruiter told me point-blank that his superiors thought I cheated on the test. It was apparently the highest score anyone at this particular recruiting site had ever seen, and my grades were mediocre (see above about poor study habits).

bongoman37 5y ago

How is knowing the answer 'cheating' by any stretch of that word?

ChuckMcM 5y ago
The assertion was that I had somehow acquired the answers to the test before I took the test. The evidence for that, flimsy as it was, was that I finished the test "too quickly to have done the work." Getting the answers before the test was the alleged cheating.

regularfry 5y ago

What was frustrating to me, in the days before this sort of thing was all over YouTube, was reading that Feynman had a magical technique in biographies and so on, but not being able to find any reference to what the damn trick was.

acchow 5y ago

> When I showed him the steps and explained the origins Did you not put the steps on the paper you submitted?

ChuckMcM 5y ago
Not enough apparently. But to be fair, as a freshman in a college calculus class that was essentially reviewing what I had already done in high school I was kind of an asshole. I skipped a lot of his classes and often did the formulaic questions in my head and just wrote down the answer. I don't recommend this approach.

aidenn0 5y ago

I've only ever been accused of cheating once[1]; which is perhaps surprising given my poor study habits and high test scores. It probably helps that I tend towards a fairly deliberate pace on my tests so I was rarely done super-early. 1: That one time was not even in school; when I graduated I applied to OCS, and the recruiter told me point-blank that his superiors thought I cheated on the test. It was apparently the highest score anyone at this particular recruiting site had ever seen, and my grades were mediocre (see above about poor study habits).