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Heh. Happens all the time with tests and questionnaires, the choice is always frustrating: * "Does the author really mean what they are asking? Are the mistake

• mewpmewp2 5y ago
  Same with some driving exam questions I have had. For example worded something like that, "does driving faster in some sections of the journey affect your planned time of arrival?" I don't remember if the wording was specifically like this, but it was something that to me logically obvious answer is "yes", but the correct answer and what they expect is "no", to show that you are a reasonable driver who won't speed unnecessarily. And I think throughout the driving exam there were several questions like that. This type of thing really annoys me. EDIT: I found the actual question - although I still had to translate it - and I think I was giving the question a benefit of the doubt from my memory, with the term "planned" as I had written here, the actual way the question was setup was following: What affects the duration of a planned journey? a) Length of the journey. b) Maximum speed in few lone sections of the journey. It uses checkboxes, so you can check both. They expect you to check only a), but b) is in my view also logically correct answer as if at any section even if it's shorter than 1 metres, if your max speed nears 0, duration of your journey will reach infinity. But it is worded in such a way that most people will get the hint that B) should not be checked.
  • nvilcins 5y ago
    Wow those sound like such badly designed questions. What country is this?
    • AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
      I don't know about that person, but a friend of mine from India was telling me about a driving test question there - [translated] "How far should you stay behind another car - A) 2 meters B) 2 seconds". Apparently the correct answer is 2 seconds. In my opinion, the question is weirdly ambiguous.
      • macintux 5y ago
        I’m curious, why do you think that’s ambiguous?
      • samatman 5y ago
        What's ambiguous about it? Two meters behind a car at highway speeds can get you killed. If it were a question only about cars at rest it would be phrased something like "how far behind a car should you stop when queued" or something of that nature.
        • denton-scratch 5y ago
          There are few places in India where you can drive at "highway speeds".
      • bombela 5y ago
        This makes sense to me. What matters is the reaction time and braking distance.
      • hibbelig 5y ago
        I guess two meters is sufficient when you drive a walking pace, but any faster than that two meters will be too little. You say that this was in India, and I'm guessing two meters is way too much in a traffic jam :-)
      • stavros 5y ago
        "Two seconds" is what I learned too. The book here says that you should be at the spot where the previous car was two seconds ago, which is good advice, as it's independent of speed. You can think of it as "it'll take you one second to react and one to brake to a stop, so you should be two seconds away".
  • LegitShady 5y ago
    I was taking a firearms safety course and there was a true/false section on a test. I can’t recall what the question was specifically but it was about which laws something fell under and the main issue was the word ‘or’ - when used as a logical OR the answer was True. When used as a sort of common day ‘or’ the answer was probably false. I put false without thinking. I had everything else on the test right and part of the course was the instructor reviewing your test and going over your incorrect answers. He wasn’t a programmer (I think former military tbh) and didn’t really understand why I got it wrong even after I explained it…
    • mnw21cam 5y ago
      What other meaning of the word "or" is there?
      • bmn__ 5y ago
        distinction between inclusive and exclusive or
      • wizzwizz4 5y ago
        XOR.
      • mauvehaus 5y ago
        In common usage, "or" is usually taken to mean exclusive or (XOR). Logical OR is non-exclusive. In most cases you can infer which is meant from context or it doesn't actually matter (much). On a test for a gun license, it could get a little squishy as there are likely questions about the law (which only sometimes aligns with common sense) translated into lay English (which lacks the degree of precision you would likely find in the actual legal phrasing). From Reddit ELI5: "Cream or Sugar, in coffee is OR it means one the other or both Fish or Chicken, for dinner is XOR it means one or the other not both." https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v6dcd/comment/d5vt5ef/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v6dcd/c...
        • mnw21cam 5y ago
  • buu700 5y ago
    Actually, as worded, I think "no" is technically the correct answer to that. The current projected/expected arrival time would be altered at the time that you begin driving more quickly, but the planned arrival time is ossified before you start the car.
    • nvilcins 5y ago
      > I don't remember if the wording was specifically like this [..]
    • mewpmewp2 5y ago
      Yeah, I couldn't find the specific wording right now and whether there was some sort of plausible play with the word "planned". This question is also translated.
      • buu700 5y ago
        Ah okay, that makes sense.
        • mewpmewp2 5y ago
          Actually I managed to find out the exact wording of the question, it was fairly different from what I remembered: What affects the duration of a planned journey? a) Length of the journey. b) Maximum speed in few lone sections of the journey. It uses checkboxes, so you can check both. They expect you to check only a), but b) is in my view also logically correct answer as if at any section even if it's shorter than 1 metres, if your max speed nears 0, duration of your journey will reach infinity. But it is worded in such a way that most people will get the hint that B) should not be checked.
          • buu700 5y ago
            Ah okay, yeah, clearly would need to be checked then if they wanted a literal and honest answer.
          • tharkun__ 5y ago
  • crispyambulance 5y ago
    If I remember correctly, that question likely refers to some argument in the driving manual about speeding. Something along the lines of "speeding in most urban areas doesn't actually help get someone to their destination faster. There are always multiple traffic lights and other cars to contend with, so it's not helpful to go over the speed limit and it increases the risk and severity of an accident." It's perfectly solid advice, who hasn't been passed aggressively by an ah-ole with tinted windows only to catch up to them at every traffic light? The question obviously wants to screen for that tidbit of knowledge, but it's not phrased rigorously enough for the HN-crowd, I guess.
    • avalys 5y ago
      On the other hand, if you are driving on the interstate highways across the USA, driving 85 mph instead of the 65 mph limit will save you roughly 3 hours from an 800-mile journey.
    • raptorfactor 5y ago
      Isn't there some confirmation bias (not sure if that's necessarily the correct term here, but you'll get the gist regardless) here in that you're more likely to remember the situations in which you catch up with the person who passed you (i.e. "look at this idiot getting nowhere"), and less likely to remember the situations in which that person makes a light that you don't and you never see them again? Massively depends on the specifics of the roads you're on too of course (and also how the lights are timed).
      • sdoering 5y ago
        Years ago the did an experiment in Germany (I know, a one time test with 2 cars/drivers is more or less anecdata). The task was to drive from Duesseldorf to Munich. Two identical cars, two very experienced drivers. one was told to go as fast as possible without breaking speed limits on the way (we don't have a general speed limit on the German Autobahn (highway)) tthe oother ro drive at a relaxed 120 km/h were possible and also honor speed limits. Both were equipped with EEG (heart rate and stuff). The driving distance is slightly above 600km. The first drive (as fast as possible) arrived first. Waiting for the relaxed driver to come in second. That happened 20 minutes later. So on a trip of > 5 hours the gain was 20 minutes. But at what cost. The EEG told a story of pure stress, massive heart rate spikes even for an experienced driver like the one behind the wheel. While the other one came in not only at a relaxed speed but a way more relaxed body and mind. Medical doctors concluded that the EEG of number two was way more healthy. Btw: One reason why the first car was only 20 minutes quicker was the fact that the driver had to stop to refuel. This cost him minutes. While the second driver arrived with gas to spare. So even economically it made sense to drive a relaxed style. Not to speak of the ecological aspect. So to wrap up. The fast driver often comes in first. But not as quick as the feel they are. And at a high price.
  • mitchdoogle 5y ago
    Certainly over longer distances and highway driving, driving faster will get you somewhere faster. In city driving though, where most people drive, it is correct that speeding up for certain portions of the journey will not get you there faster since the increased speed over short spurts can't make up for congestion, stop lights, etc.
    • FireBeyond 5y ago
      Pretty much. Every EVIP (emergency vehicle incident prevention) course preaches this. The advantage to lights and sirens and opticom (the traffic light changing technology) is minimizing stop and go, and optimizing flow of traffic in your direction. They demonstrate that an extra 20mph on your average response, which is likely less than 3 miles (if not quite a bit less), and not much more than 5 until you start to get more rural, is likely only to save you seconds - and there's very very few things where an ambulance arriving literally seconds faster makes a difference in patient outcomes. But it does slow your reaction time, and it does massively increase your accident risk. And that's couched in, "And now it's going to take many many more minutes for another unit to get to your patient than the few seconds you'd have saved".
  • IggleSniggle 5y ago
    You’ve just reminded me of a question I had on a driver’s test many years ago. The free-response question was something like: “What is the single most important thing you can do to improve your safety as a driver?” I answered: “Always drive sober.” The “correct” answer was: “Fasten your seatbelt.” I can only imagine the grader’s face / thoughts when they had to mark my answer as incorrect.
• crispyambulance 5y ago
  I don't know about gun-permit tests, but people DO fail these kinds of screens. To a large extent failing a test like that would demonstrate how far out-of-touch the test-taker is. I suppose in this case it might instead just be a formality? And no one has actually ever failed that test?
• Turing_Machine 5y ago
  I recall taking "ethics training" at a former job where a typical quiz question was something like this: A vendor offers you season tickets to the Cubs games. Are you allowed to accept? 1) Yes, because neither of you are in the baseball business. 2) No, not under any circumstances. 3) Yes, if you give the tickets to someone else, such as your brother-in-law. The "right answer" was quite obvious, making it more of an intelligence test than an ethics test.
• exporectomy 5y ago
  The tax forms in my country are filled with this second-guessing. For example if it asks how much income you earned from interest, you're supposed to exclude income that you've already paid tax on and exclude some kinds of investment that are asked about separately in another question but they don't explain this so you have to keep tweaking the numbers until the automatic calculation looks right. There's also a question about having "returned to the country" which really confused me when I was travelling back and forth. I had to talk to the helpdesk to discover that "returned" isn't the same as "arrived after having previously left". I might have got some of the wording wrong but that's the gist.
• BarryMilo 5y ago
  Tests are actually one of the sturdier aspects of Psychology, epistemically speaking. It's one of the areas where reliability is actually testable. That said improvised psychology is as bad as anything improvised, only people are generally more comfortable improvising it (and indeed commenting on it) without knowledge of their lack of knowledge, as opposed to fields that look more like science such as software engineering.