5 ms·

A student's grandmother is far more likely to die just before an exam

157 points by DK007 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- vidarh 14y ago
  Lighten up - it's humour satirizing students trying to get out of exams by claiming grandma died, not research.
  - beerglass 14y ago
    Exactly, I get it. Wonder, why everyone here is discussing the issue seriously rather than noting the humor in the piece.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      Many of the comments in here are tongue in cheek. The current top comment is incredibly so, in the same vein as the paper. Others are discussing it seriously because there are some aspects which may be true even about the joke of an article.
beerglass 14y ago
Hilarious! Reminds me of another paper suggesting a game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem - http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/toilet.html http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/toilet.html
lightyrs 14y ago
This is one of the best submissions I've seen on hn. So often these days, people are treating 'SCIENCE' as a completely objective enterprise when it is usually the interpretation of objective observations that is fed to the public, which is a very subjective matter.
- D_Alex 14y ago
  Agree, excellent submission. I saw this as an great example of drawing important conclusions after spotting interesting data.
- NamTaf 14y ago
  I actually did have a grandmother die 2 days before a final exam. Needless to say, no one believed me. :( Agreed though that this is a great representation of using educated subjectivity to draw reasonable conclusions from data. That's the one thing that a science degree should be teaching over all other aspects. Remembering equations, careful experimental technique, etc. all pale in to significance compared with critical analysis skills.
btilly 14y ago
This is indeed a strange and worrying phenomena. I am in fact aware of cases where a student has managed to lose 3 or more grandmothers while pursuing an undergraduate degree. This leaves the student with a negative number of grandmothers. The underlying mechanisms allowing this is highly mysterious and is certainly deserving of further research.
- waiwai933 14y ago
  The author addresses this point, and how it is possible, but why so many grandfathers choose to remarry so quickly is still mysterious. > As more people go to college, their families find that, for safety reasons, it is wise to increase the number of grandmothers per family. Since there is currently no biological way of doing so (though another grant proposal in preparation will ask for funds to look into the prospect of cloning grandmothers, using modern genetic engineering techniques), the families must resort to in creasing the pool by divorce and remarriage.
  - dudus 14y ago
    Which Author? Although it seems to be stored on Dongwon Lee user dir, he states this document was written by "Mike Adams". I couldn't find this Mike Adams and I find it a little disturbing to read a Study that has no references, no date and the Author doesn't bother about writing his own name in it.
    - Steuard 14y ago
      As I said below, my tentative assumption is that this article is a humor piece, not based on actual data.
- jholman 14y ago
  TFA covers this, actually. Divorce and remarriage can help a student have more grandmothers. Also consider the future possibility of cloning grandmothers.
- D_Alex 14y ago
  We might also be able to solve the world hunger by giving heaps of homework to mediocre students. Valuable nutrients which now end up in dog food could be made available to the starving masses.
jmcgough 14y ago
reminds me of the fmri of a dead salmon (http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf)
bherms 14y ago
The sad thing is I actually did lose a grandmother and grandfather a few weeks before exams. :( ninja edit: this was years ago, to clarify
kenthorvath 14y ago
Of course, students have no reason to report deaths of relatives when there are no consequences to missing class. So, deaths most likely only get reported during exams.
- rflrob 14y ago
  Furthermore, more conscientious students are more likely to grin and bear it, thus giving the A students a lower rate of reporting.
  - michaelt 14y ago
    I agree, but that still doesn't explain why the reported death rate for grandmothers is 24 times higher than that for grandfathers. I suppose it's possible students care about their grandmothers more than their grandfathers.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Men also die earlier than women so it's possible most students grandfathers are already dead before they reach college. I know this was the case for me.
      - mpl 14y ago
        For me as well. And I have three grandmothers, courtesy of my stepmother. Two of them died while I was in college, the third is 97 y.o., and I've got two more semesters to go, so there's a chance I may be one of those people who dips into the "negative grandmothers" category.
      - aes256 14y ago
        This is a very good point. Both my grandfathers passed away when I was young (i.e. before I took any important exams), whereas both my grandmothers are still alive and kicking.
      - michaelt 14y ago
        There's not really an age when women outnumber men 24:1 though [1] [1] Figure 2, http://cnx.org/content/m42935/latest/?collection=col11407/latest http://cnx.org/content/m42935/latest/?collection=col11407/la...
droithomme 14y ago
Yes, every teacher has experienced this. A lot of teachers have become jaded and will assume every student who brings this up is a liar and a cheat. The problem though is that although the majority of the cases are made up to get out of exams or assignments, a small number aren't. These students, in addition to losing their beloved relative then can become very distraught to find themselves unexpectedly saddled with a false accusation of being a liar. Because of this, when I taught, I would nod and sympathize, then say that because there had been some abuse of this in the past, they could have an extension or such only if they provided an actual published obituary from a newspaper or funeral home. Some other teachers use another method, of having a certain number of exams or assignments that can be dropped without penalty. Of course what often happens in those cases is students drop an early exam, and then later claim injustice at not getting an extra one for the deceased grandparent.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  My senior year of college I wrote to the provost expecting a close relative would die close to my exams. His sympathy was immediate, and separately from that, an obituary or other certificate would set the incomplete/rescheduling machinery in motion. He did not apologize or explain, so by presenting his personal sympathy and his professional administration of a system he was able to protect both the school's expectations and an emotional, stressed student. I think this is the best approach.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Bingo. This was even covered in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of all places
- mblake 14y ago
  Sadly I have experienced this. I was in mourning after losing a relative and refused to participate in an overtly cheerful activity.Not only was I reprimanded for it, but later heard the professor felt the need to complain to other people as well about yet another kid 'whos grandma had died'. It just so happened that my grandma had not died, nor would have I cared much if she would've had, but a much more cared for relative. Thankfully it was quite a lot of years ago.
baby 14y ago
Confirms this : http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.html http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_infl...
nasir 14y ago
Many academic papers just follow the same flow and they get published.
pkaler 14y ago
I can add one more anecdote. My grandmother passed away before my first semester final exams in my first year. My parents didn't actually tell me until after my exams finished. The thing is that she passed away in India. My grandmother would spend summers in Canada and winters in India. She passed away the same week a cousin married. My hypothesis is that stressful things happen at the end of seasonal quarters. Final exams just happen to be one of those things. Flu season also happens to be December/January. Allergy season is around May/June. I did a quick Google search but I can't find any information regarding death rate and monthly distribution. I would assume that it is evenly distributed but I wouldn't be surprised if the assumption was incorrect.
lucraft 14y ago
This suggests to me that saying your grandFather has died instead of your grandmother is a far more plausible excuse.
gregwong410 14y ago
For me, truth. My grandmother died my Junior year of college right before midterms.
josephagoss 14y ago
Last year my granddad died the day before an exam. I'm not sure if the point of the paper is that students use this as a excuse or that we just don't mention relatives dying at times when they do not conflict with other major events in someones life.
sesqu 14y ago
Some of the data seem a little suspect. The grade correlation result is unreasonably strong, and the bin sizes aren't specified, among other shortcomings. That said, this was a very entertaining read. edit: Appears to be from 1990.
- gus_massa 14y ago
  Exactly. I was reading skeptically and trying to guess what were the errors in the methodology that create this effect. Until I see the Figure I, with the almost aligned dots (If you ever made some physics or statistical experiments, you would be happy to get a measure like this.) The dots are almost aligned and one of the axes is the A/B/C/D/E grade, that is very indirect nonlinear measure. A graph like that usually means that the data are cooked. Apparently this is only a humor piece, but many of the comments seams to take this seriously.
Steuard 14y ago
This is really amusing, but I'm a little skeptical that it's based on real data. Where does this author get the data on "number in family" for each student presented on p.3, for instance? (The article would be fascinating if it were true, but I'm tentatively treating it as a humor piece.) In case it is true, let me second kenthorvath's comment: students have much less incentive to tell a professor about deaths in their family when there's no exam coming up. (I can't judge the grandmother/grandfather ratio information, because the article presents absolutely no data on that point at all. Hence even more skepticism.)
bonchibuji 14y ago
Reminds me of the old joke. Four students, all roommates, thought about skipping an exam since they haven't prepared well. They arrived really late for the exam, and gave the excuse that they had a flat tire on the way. The Professor agrees for a re-exam. After a week, they come really well prepared. But, the question paper was a shocker. "Which tire got punctured?"
- hmsimha 14y ago
  I've changed a flat and then completely failed to remember a week later whether it was on the left or right side, so I guess I would have been in some trouble.
triplesec 14y ago
old, but funny
pseut 14y ago
Just as a comment to any current students who do experience the death or illness of a relative: it's probably best to discuss things with your academic advisor (grad or undergrad) before or instead of contacting individual professors. An email from another prof has infinitely more credibility than one from a student; you only have to discuss it once, with someone you already know; and your advisor should know what resources are available to you and can help you plan the rest of the semester.
clarky07 14y ago
I can't believe how much serious discussion is taking place here. When I read the article I thought it had to be from theonion or something.
sriram_sun 14y ago
I would strongly advise grandmothers of this risk.
Turing_Machine 14y ago
When I used to TA a very large freshman class, we handled it by letting the students know on the syllabus that in such cases we would send a sympathy card to their home address. The theory was that if the story was legit, it would be a nice gesture by the course staff. If it wasn't, the student would have some 'splainin' to do at home.
gus_massa 14y ago
This article is apparently only a joke. I found some indirect report of the opinion of author (near the end of the article): http://host.madison.com/news/local/doug_moe/doug-moe-poking-fun-at-students-and-their-excuses-to/article_1a9ec28e-dedc-11de-b50f-001cc4c03286.html http://host.madison.com/news/local/doug_moe/doug-moe-poking-...

157 points by DK007 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

vidarh 14y ago
Lighten up - it's humour satirizing students trying to get out of exams by claiming grandma died, not research.
- beerglass 14y ago
  Exactly, I get it. Wonder, why everyone here is discussing the issue seriously rather than noting the humor in the piece.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Many of the comments in here are tongue in cheek. The current top comment is incredibly so, in the same vein as the paper. Others are discussing it seriously because there are some aspects which may be true even about the joke of an article.

beerglass 14y ago

Hilarious! Reminds me of another paper suggesting a game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem - http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/toilet.html http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/toilet.html

lightyrs 14y ago

This is one of the best submissions I've seen on hn. So often these days, people are treating 'SCIENCE' as a completely objective enterprise when it is usually the interpretation of objective observations that is fed to the public, which is a very subjective matter.

D_Alex 14y ago
Agree, excellent submission. I saw this as an great example of drawing important conclusions after spotting interesting data.
NamTaf 14y ago
I actually did have a grandmother die 2 days before a final exam. Needless to say, no one believed me. :( Agreed though that this is a great representation of using educated subjectivity to draw reasonable conclusions from data. That's the one thing that a science degree should be teaching over all other aspects. Remembering equations, careful experimental technique, etc. all pale in to significance compared with critical analysis skills.

btilly 14y ago

This is indeed a strange and worrying phenomena. I am in fact aware of cases where a student has managed to lose 3 or more grandmothers while pursuing an undergraduate degree. This leaves the student with a negative number of grandmothers. The underlying mechanisms allowing this is highly mysterious and is certainly deserving of further research.

waiwai933 14y ago
The author addresses this point, and how it is possible, but why so many grandfathers choose to remarry so quickly is still mysterious. > As more people go to college, their families find that, for safety reasons, it is wise to increase the number of grandmothers per family. Since there is currently no biological way of doing so (though another grant proposal in preparation will ask for funds to look into the prospect of cloning grandmothers, using modern genetic engineering techniques), the families must resort to in creasing the pool by divorce and remarriage.
- dudus 14y ago
  Which Author? Although it seems to be stored on Dongwon Lee user dir, he states this document was written by "Mike Adams". I couldn't find this Mike Adams and I find it a little disturbing to read a Study that has no references, no date and the Author doesn't bother about writing his own name in it.
  - Steuard 14y ago
    As I said below, my tentative assumption is that this article is a humor piece, not based on actual data.
jholman 14y ago
TFA covers this, actually. Divorce and remarriage can help a student have more grandmothers. Also consider the future possibility of cloning grandmothers.
D_Alex 14y ago
We might also be able to solve the world hunger by giving heaps of homework to mediocre students. Valuable nutrients which now end up in dog food could be made available to the starving masses.

jmcgough 14y ago

reminds me of the fmri of a dead salmon (http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf)

bherms 14y ago

The sad thing is I actually did lose a grandmother and grandfather a few weeks before exams. :( ninja edit: this was years ago, to clarify

kenthorvath 14y ago

Of course, students have no reason to report deaths of relatives when there are no consequences to missing class. So, deaths most likely only get reported during exams.

rflrob 14y ago
Furthermore, more conscientious students are more likely to grin and bear it, thus giving the A students a lower rate of reporting.
- michaelt 14y ago
  I agree, but that still doesn't explain why the reported death rate for grandmothers is 24 times higher than that for grandfathers. I suppose it's possible students care about their grandmothers more than their grandfathers.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Men also die earlier than women so it's possible most students grandfathers are already dead before they reach college. I know this was the case for me.
    - mpl 14y ago
      For me as well. And I have three grandmothers, courtesy of my stepmother. Two of them died while I was in college, the third is 97 y.o., and I've got two more semesters to go, so there's a chance I may be one of those people who dips into the "negative grandmothers" category.
    - aes256 14y ago
      This is a very good point. Both my grandfathers passed away when I was young (i.e. before I took any important exams), whereas both my grandmothers are still alive and kicking.
    - michaelt 14y ago
      There's not really an age when women outnumber men 24:1 though [1] [1] Figure 2, http://cnx.org/content/m42935/latest/?collection=col11407/latest http://cnx.org/content/m42935/latest/?collection=col11407/la...

droithomme 14y ago

Yes, every teacher has experienced this. A lot of teachers have become jaded and will assume every student who brings this up is a liar and a cheat. The problem though is that although the majority of the cases are made up to get out of exams or assignments, a small number aren't. These students, in addition to losing their beloved relative then can become very distraught to find themselves unexpectedly saddled with a false accusation of being a liar. Because of this, when I taught, I would nod and sympathize, then say that because there had been some abuse of this in the past, they could have an extension or such only if they provided an actual published obituary from a newspaper or funeral home. Some other teachers use another method, of having a certain number of exams or assignments that can be dropped without penalty. Of course what often happens in those cases is students drop an early exam, and then later claim injustice at not getting an extra one for the deceased grandparent.

1123581321 14y ago
My senior year of college I wrote to the provost expecting a close relative would die close to my exams. His sympathy was immediate, and separately from that, an obituary or other certificate would set the incomplete/rescheduling machinery in motion. He did not apologize or explain, so by presenting his personal sympathy and his professional administration of a system he was able to protect both the school's expectations and an emotional, stressed student. I think this is the best approach.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Bingo. This was even covered in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of all places
mblake 14y ago
Sadly I have experienced this. I was in mourning after losing a relative and refused to participate in an overtly cheerful activity.Not only was I reprimanded for it, but later heard the professor felt the need to complain to other people as well about yet another kid 'whos grandma had died'. It just so happened that my grandma had not died, nor would have I cared much if she would've had, but a much more cared for relative. Thankfully it was quite a lot of years ago.

baby 14y ago

Confirms this : http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.html http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_infl...

nasir 14y ago

Many academic papers just follow the same flow and they get published.

pkaler 14y ago

I can add one more anecdote. My grandmother passed away before my first semester final exams in my first year. My parents didn't actually tell me until after my exams finished. The thing is that she passed away in India. My grandmother would spend summers in Canada and winters in India. She passed away the same week a cousin married. My hypothesis is that stressful things happen at the end of seasonal quarters. Final exams just happen to be one of those things. Flu season also happens to be December/January. Allergy season is around May/June. I did a quick Google search but I can't find any information regarding death rate and monthly distribution. I would assume that it is evenly distributed but I wouldn't be surprised if the assumption was incorrect.

lucraft 14y ago

This suggests to me that saying your grandFather has died instead of your grandmother is a far more plausible excuse.

gregwong410 14y ago

For me, truth. My grandmother died my Junior year of college right before midterms.

josephagoss 14y ago

Last year my granddad died the day before an exam. I'm not sure if the point of the paper is that students use this as a excuse or that we just don't mention relatives dying at times when they do not conflict with other major events in someones life.

sesqu 14y ago

Some of the data seem a little suspect. The grade correlation result is unreasonably strong, and the bin sizes aren't specified, among other shortcomings. That said, this was a very entertaining read. edit: Appears to be from 1990.

gus_massa 14y ago
Exactly. I was reading skeptically and trying to guess what were the errors in the methodology that create this effect. Until I see the Figure I, with the almost aligned dots (If you ever made some physics or statistical experiments, you would be happy to get a measure like this.) The dots are almost aligned and one of the axes is the A/B/C/D/E grade, that is very indirect nonlinear measure. A graph like that usually means that the data are cooked. Apparently this is only a humor piece, but many of the comments seams to take this seriously.

Steuard 14y ago

This is really amusing, but I'm a little skeptical that it's based on real data. Where does this author get the data on "number in family" for each student presented on p.3, for instance? (The article would be fascinating if it were true, but I'm tentatively treating it as a humor piece.) In case it is true, let me second kenthorvath's comment: students have much less incentive to tell a professor about deaths in their family when there's no exam coming up. (I can't judge the grandmother/grandfather ratio information, because the article presents absolutely no data on that point at all. Hence even more skepticism.)

bonchibuji 14y ago

Reminds me of the old joke. Four students, all roommates, thought about skipping an exam since they haven't prepared well. They arrived really late for the exam, and gave the excuse that they had a flat tire on the way. The Professor agrees for a re-exam. After a week, they come really well prepared. But, the question paper was a shocker. "Which tire got punctured?"

hmsimha 14y ago
I've changed a flat and then completely failed to remember a week later whether it was on the left or right side, so I guess I would have been in some trouble.

triplesec 14y ago

old, but funny

pseut 14y ago

Just as a comment to any current students who do experience the death or illness of a relative: it's probably best to discuss things with your academic advisor (grad or undergrad) before or instead of contacting individual professors. An email from another prof has infinitely more credibility than one from a student; you only have to discuss it once, with someone you already know; and your advisor should know what resources are available to you and can help you plan the rest of the semester.

clarky07 14y ago

I can't believe how much serious discussion is taking place here. When I read the article I thought it had to be from theonion or something.

sriram_sun 14y ago

I would strongly advise grandmothers of this risk.

Turing_Machine 14y ago

When I used to TA a very large freshman class, we handled it by letting the students know on the syllabus that in such cases we would send a sympathy card to their home address. The theory was that if the story was legit, it would be a nice gesture by the course staff. If it wasn't, the student would have some 'splainin' to do at home.

gus_massa 14y ago

This article is apparently only a joke. I found some indirect report of the opinion of author (near the end of the article): http://host.madison.com/news/local/doug_moe/doug-moe-poking-fun-at-students-and-their-excuses-to/article_1a9ec28e-dedc-11de-b50f-001cc4c03286.html http://host.madison.com/news/local/doug_moe/doug-moe-poking-...