The point about cheating is this: what makes cheating possible? It's because there is a gap between answers written on a piece of paper, and what is inside some

The point about cheating is this: what makes cheating possible? It's because there is a gap between answers written on a piece of paper, and what is inside someone's head. This is true of all kinds of tests, but it is more true of answers that are identical for every student. If the names on the tests were somehow mixed, this would be undetectable by graders, where it would be immediately apparent for a written exam. The significance of that has nothing to do with preventing cheating. It just means that the gap between right answers and real knowledge is greater when the answers are all identical. A concrete example: in my college physics classes, I studied with a friend who solved problems by memorizing which type of problem required which formulas. I figured out which formula to use by visualizing the problem, which is a much more efficient way of doing it and leads to a better general understanding of physics. These important differences are undetectable just by looking at whether we both got the right answers on a test. You can account for this indirectly, by limiting the amount of time, so that my study partner would never be able to finish the whole test by using his method. But the information he gets about the incorrectness of his answers does nothing to help him fix his inefficient method. He did very well on the homework, the issue was only revealed at the midterm. Physics education would be improved if taught people how to visualize problems, which means making it more qualitative and less quantitative.