7 ms·

Computer science students successfully boycott class final

77 points by DavidChouinard 14y ago

tokenadult 14y ago
Previous submission of canonical URL (1 comment): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217463 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217463 Previous submission of same story with good reporting from different source (no comments): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217066 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217066 The professor has changed his grading policy, as noted in the submission I saw earlier from the other source.
scott_s 14y ago
I don't feel this is really a "boycott" - it's not like they're objecting to him, the course, the university or the rules itself. They're just collectively exercising a loophole. I wanted to call it "conspiracy," but that implies secrecy, when the whole organization was very much in the open. Perhaps "openly collude." Anyway, I like the reaction from the professor and the head of the CS department. It's nice to read about people reacting reasonably and seeing the forest.
- eplanit 14y ago
  They cleverly "gamed" the system. I say clever, but I wonder if they would have actually learned programming better by studying and taking the exam.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    "Also, since students didn’t know for sure until exam time if the boycott would be successful, they had to study for it anyway, which is a main benefit of exams,” Selinski wrote.
bitcartel 14y ago
"In a programming course, it’s exceedingly difficult to judge one’s knowledge of a subject by a written 50 minute exam. It ends up being a test on nit-picky details and doesn’t accurately determine the good programmers from the great, or the not so great." -- Student Whereas of course boycotting an exam reveals so much more about one's programming knowledge!
- biot 14y ago
  [Edit: my comment was in reply to a sentence in the parent comment which has since been removed.] There's nothing they "got away with". “In my courses, all grades are relative to the highest actually achieved score. Thus, if no one showed up and everyone got 0 percent, everyone would be marked as 100 percent,” Froehlich wrote. The students took advantage of a stated policy and received the promised result of that policy. It's game theory, and they played by the game's rules fair and square.
  - bitcartel 14y ago
    Yes, but it does seem like the students were cheeky and got away with it. They played the game according to the rules, but there is the issue of gentlemanly conduct.
    - MBlume 14y ago
      I got the impression that the professor had anticipated this as a possible outcome, and was intentionally challenging the students to overcome the coordination problem, as he didn't think they'd be able.
    - biot 14y ago
      I think the question hinges on whether or not it was an intended consequence. The professor said: “I had decided that I am sticking to my policy, they had decided to boycott the exam, and that was pretty much it,” Froelich wrote. “The students learned that by coming together, they can achieve something that individually they could never have done.” This seems to indicate he approves. Though now that the previously theoretical concept has been proven, he has changed the rules so that if everyone gets 0 points, then everyone ends up with 0 percent too.
- Scriptor 14y ago
  It sounds like they were just introductory courses. If they didn't learn anything they'll soon be weeded out by more advanced CS classes.
betterunix 14y ago
"Boycott" is the wrong word here. The students certainly organized themselves, but they were not boycotting -- they were taking advantage of a grading policy that creates an optimal strategy for the students if they work together and cooperate. What these students learned by working together like this is almost certainly more important to their intellectual growth than the exam itself. The professor for the class seems to recognize that, which is also a good thing.
- tolmasky 14y ago
  It seems that they were preventing other students from going in as well (at least that was the implication with the guarding of doors). So perhaps they actually learned to get what you want through coercion.
  - GhotiFish 14y ago
    That, in my opinion, tarnished their achievement. I agree with the sentiment of what was done, but the execution was poor. It would of being a far greater achievement if they didn't enforce the choice.
- nicholasjarnold 14y ago
  Yes exactly! <personal_anecdote> In high school I had a physics professor who had this exact policy, except that he never imagined the consequences of everybody NOT taking the test. I did, and with the help of a friend we tried to organize the 'boycott'. It failed horribly, but at least we tried. Great story OP! </personal_anecdote>
- baddox 14y ago
  I think it's an appropriate usage of the term. It's an organized effort to abstain from some specific activity, which is a broad but well-understood definition for "boycott." Nations choosing to not send competitors to the Olympics, for example, is widely called a boycott despite it not having anything to do with purchasing a product or service.
  - 14y ago
JoshTriplett 14y ago
If I've gone to all the trouble to study for an exam anyway, just in case, then I'd much rather actually take the exam to check my knowledge. The article tries to paint this result as a case of solidarity and coordination, rather than slacking and intimidation. "on the day of the exam, all the students arrived half an hour early and stood outside the doors to make sure no one went into the exam room"; what is this, a picket line? I had a few classes that had three exams and a final, and the grading policy dropped the lowest exam score. Even when I got 100% or more on the first two exams, and got explicitly told by the professor that the exam was optional and I didn't need to show up, I still took the last one, because why not check the knowledge I studied? Given the intimidation factor, I'd probably end up asking the professor if I could take the exam outside of the normal class time anonymously, and leave people to guess based on who isn't in the same class the next term.
- scott_s 14y ago
  Intimidation probably played a role in people not taking the exam, but they weren't there soley for intimidation. If someone did walk in to take the exam, they all would have done the same - they were there in case someone did, they would avoid the 0.
  - gojomo 14y ago
    Were you there? If not, you don't know how much intimidation may have been applied.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Correct, which is why I said "intimidation probably played a role." I don't know how much, but I find it likely it was there. But my point was that even if they applied no intimidation, they would have still shown up to avoid getting that 0.
  - JoshTriplett 14y ago
    The article said "Some had studied just in case"; "some", not "all".
oskarth 14y ago
Impressive feat. Too bad the class wasn't in Game Theory, that would've been even more isomorphic than the Harvard Intro to Congress class incident. EDIT: Isomorphic used in the sense of the event ("boycott", cheating) being similar in form/geist to the class taken. I'm sure there's a better word for it.
- mrdmnd 14y ago
  I'm not sure you know what isomorphic means.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    *quickly looks up the definition of 'isomorphism'* Definitions of isomorphism: Find isomorphisms at great prices! Wait, that's not one... strangely makes me want to click through though. 1. Biology: Similarity in form, as in organisms of different ancestry. 2. Mathematics: A one-to-one correspondence between the elements of two sets such that the result of an operation on elements of one set corresponds to the result of the analogous operation on their images in the other set. 3. Chemistry: A close similarity in the crystalline structure of two or more substances of similar chemical composition. Yep, definitely some questionable usage there.
  - alex-g 14y ago
    There's a story about a student (in group theory) being asked "Are G and H isomorphic?" and replying "G is isomorphic, but H isn't".
- scott_s 14y ago
  Another reporting of the incident (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/12/students-boycott-final-challenge-professors-grading-policy-and-get#ixzz2KnL9ysqU http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/12/students-boyco...) actually explains some of the student logic: Andrew Kelly, a student in Fröhlich’s Introduction to Programming class who was one of the boycott’s key organizers, explained the logic of the students' decision via e-mail: "Handing out 0's to your classmates will not improve your performance in this course," Kelly said. This is actually not an interesting problem from the game theory perspective: defection gains you nothing. That is, if you're the only person who defects, your situation is the same if no one had defected. I'm assuming here that the grade curving is local to the assignments. Handing out zeroes to your classmates will help if your overall number of points goes up, and overall number of points in the class determines final grade.
rprospero 14y ago
I remember some friends of mine who did the same thing, except that one kid managed to sneak in and take the exam. Everyone hated him, but his class rank skyrocketed.
Macsenour 14y ago
In my Intro to Computers class we had guest speakers. One speaker/professor was in charge of statistics. Many of the first year CS students left the class. He stopped the 10th one asking where he thought he was going? The student said he had better things to do. This enraged the professor who went on a loud rant about how this really is important and we were awful for not paying attention. He then stormed out. A week later the usual class professor emailed all of saying we had to study the topic on our own since half the class had walked out. I emailed her and the rest of the class that if any of his topic were on the test I would make sure they both were fired at least reprimanded. By the offended professors own words, half the class was still there and interested in the topic. Basically, he walked out on us. His topic was not on the final.
- just2n 14y ago
  Sounds like the professor was crappy. I'd have said "very well then, have a nice day." Then, at the end of the class, I'd pass around a piece of paper and tell everyone left to write their name on it. We'll call it the "I'm not a douchebag exam." Everyone present would get a 100, everyone else would get a 0. And then I'd still have that content on the "real" exam.
  - Macsenour 14y ago
    The next class session someone suggested that we should have signed a paper proving we were there after he left. Hindsight.
- jff 14y ago
  You come off like an entitled, smug prick, FYI.
  - Macsenour 14y ago
    lol
- smsm42 14y ago
  Really sad story. The professor, of course, should not have walked out, what should have happened instead he should have continued teaching (even if only one student remained in class) and then have as much as possible of these topics on the test. And when people that walked out failed the course they'd have to consider if they want to retake it, this time properly, of choose something else instead.
brador 14y ago
Wait, so if you were the one student who did take the exam you would get 100% and everyone else gets 0?
stcredzero 14y ago
Wait a moment, if all grades are relative to the highest, then aren't all grades a fraction using the highest grade as the denominator? The reason this situation seems unusual: The prof's grading system has a division by zero bug.
- littledot5566 14y ago
  That's why is the highest grade were to be 0, everyone would get infinite marks that caps at 100.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    How about just put exception handling around the whole thing, then assign 100 to everyone if there's a DivideByZeroException?
- lotharbot 14y ago
  > "aren't all grades a fraction" Not necessarily. The prof could choose to make grades relative by subtracting rather than dividing. If that was the policy, then someone could've boycotted the boycott by going in and trying to score exactly one point on the exam, possibly after everyone else left. Then everyone else would score a 99. It would have at least given everyone something to think about afterwards.
master_lincoln 14y ago
That makes the point of grading a student's result senseless. I don't even mean the 'boycott' but that Froehlich adapts the grades to the highest received. That would mean if everyone is lazy/stupid they'll all be evaluated better than they are. So why have a grading system in the first place if it doesn't enable you to compare results indepently. (btw I would vote for a grade free teaching system anyways)
- lhnn 14y ago
  To me, it's a check against a teacher making an obscenely hard test that even the smartest students can't pass. The logic would be that if the best and brightest can only get a 60, then the exam should be curved. This assumes that the best and brightest are actually really smart and knowledgeable.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    It's not obvious until you try to create a test yourself that creating a fair test is hard. Particularly for an intro course, since it's material that you know so well that you barely think about it consciously anymore. I took the same approach, and I was cognizant of the fact that some of my students came in with prior programming experience.
  - JoshTriplett 14y ago
    I had a professor once (for modern physics, i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics) who said that if anyone could get 100% on his test, they'd saturate the "sensor" and make the measurement less accurate; he wanted to see the bell curve centered low enough that it didn't get clipped by the maximum score. He calibrated his tests so the highest scores would typically fall in the 50s or 60s, and then applied a curve. Actually getting 100 would require knowing all the material for that course in advance and then some. An interesting, if nerve-wracking, philosophy. :) It's the only time I've ever left a test and not known for sure what grade I'd get.
minimaxir 14y ago
Game theory says that no one cheating and deciding to take the final would be the obvious outcome because the students have no incentive to cheat the system. If they skip the test, they get 100. If they take the test, they get up to 100. No advantage from taking the test. Now, if the maximum score for everyone skipping the test was lower than 100, then things would be interesting.
- jff 14y ago
  Excellent username/post combo. What if some students believed that the professor would change his mind and change the rules when he realized what was going on?
- cperciva 14y ago
  Everybody skipping the exam is a Nash equilibrium, but assuming perfectly rational behaviour (and that everybody has a utility function which depends solely on final exam grade) is dangerous. This is, of course, why students turned up and waited outside to see if they needed to write the exam rather than just assuming that other students would all do the "obvious" thing.
gwright 14y ago
I had a 10th grade bio teacher who always gave 50 question multiple choice exams (i.e. 2 points per question). She always offered a 'shoot the moon' option. If you could get every question wrong you would get 100 for the exam instead of 0. Of course if you got one question correct, you would end up with just a 2 for the exam. As I recall there were several successful attempts during the year.
- bmcfeeley 14y ago
  Are you from Northern NJ? My 10th grade Bio teacher did the same!
  - gwright 14y ago
    Nope, but nearby in southwest CT.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
russell 14y ago
My son had a required CS course at UC Berkeley taught by a professor who didnt want to deal with undergraduates. To discourage them he graded his exams more or less as follows: 5 points for getting an answer completely correct, no errors at all; -5 points for any error in the answer, no matter how trivial; 0 points for not answering. Not answering any question was probably a B, but there was such an uproar from the students that the class was turned into pass/fail. My son opted to take it the following semester from a different prof.
- pacaro 14y ago
  Mathematics at Cambridge is graded in a similar (but far more complicated) interesting way[1] (This is a simplification) - Questions are graded out of 20 and can also be awarded a quality grade. Answers scoring 15 or more are awarded an alpha, those between 10 - 14 inclusive a beta. Alphas and Betas are extremely heavily weighted - the score for the top students is 30 alpha + 5 beta + raw score, so a single question scoring 15 is potentially worth 45, quality is much more important than quality, the pass/fail line is 2 alpha + 1 beta [1] http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/schedules.pdf http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/schedules.pdf
- lotharbot 14y ago
  My wife had an advanced mathematics course (University of Washington) where leaving an answer blank was worth 30% of the possible points. Any attempted answer was scored starting at 0. This was meant to discourage hard-to-grade, crappy attempts at scoring a few points. Students would skip problems they didn't think they could answer well and focus their attention on problems where they thought they could put together a fairly solid answer.
joezhou 14y ago
this is glorious!
tarahmarie 14y ago
I should have graded my political science classes this way; would have saved me an awful lot of red ink.
VexXtreme 14y ago
I find that the social bullies and self appointed dictators in social groups often try bully people into submission by shaming them for not complying with "what is good for the group". Such cowards are often hiding behind the well being of "the people" and try to make non-comformists look bad. Because if you aren't doing what is good for "the people", you somehow must be evil. Well guess what, you don't owe people shit and they don't owe you shit. You are not responsible for other people unless you are in charge of them, working for the common goal or unless they're your family members. Your classmates are none of these things and you owe them absolutely nothing. It's funny the way bullies will often be the first to betray the group and how it's suddenly "every man for himself" when shit hits the fan.
hakaaaaak 14y ago
And he is not changing his grading system for next year? Next year the students ought to try not even going to class. The positive reinforcement and acceptance of publicity could be compared to the media making a big deal out of Columbine. Whenever bad behavior is made into a spectacle, it will be copied. I will be completely surprised if we don't see more of these events in the coming years, not just because it is possible, but because JH is being fucking stupid by publicizing this.

Previous submission of canonical URL (1 comment): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217463 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217463 Previous submission of same story with good reporting from different source (no comments): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217066 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217066 The professor has changed his grading policy, as noted in the submission I saw earlier from the other source.

scott_s 14y ago

I don't feel this is really a "boycott" - it's not like they're objecting to him, the course, the university or the rules itself. They're just collectively exercising a loophole. I wanted to call it "conspiracy," but that implies secrecy, when the whole organization was very much in the open. Perhaps "openly collude." Anyway, I like the reaction from the professor and the head of the CS department. It's nice to read about people reacting reasonably and seeing the forest.

eplanit 14y ago
They cleverly "gamed" the system. I say clever, but I wonder if they would have actually learned programming better by studying and taking the exam.
- scott_s 14y ago
  "Also, since students didn’t know for sure until exam time if the boycott would be successful, they had to study for it anyway, which is a main benefit of exams,” Selinski wrote.

bitcartel 14y ago

"In a programming course, it’s exceedingly difficult to judge one’s knowledge of a subject by a written 50 minute exam. It ends up being a test on nit-picky details and doesn’t accurately determine the good programmers from the great, or the not so great." -- Student Whereas of course boycotting an exam reveals so much more about one's programming knowledge!

biot 14y ago
[Edit: my comment was in reply to a sentence in the parent comment which has since been removed.] There's nothing they "got away with". “In my courses, all grades are relative to the highest actually achieved score. Thus, if no one showed up and everyone got 0 percent, everyone would be marked as 100 percent,” Froehlich wrote. The students took advantage of a stated policy and received the promised result of that policy. It's game theory, and they played by the game's rules fair and square.
- bitcartel 14y ago
  Yes, but it does seem like the students were cheeky and got away with it. They played the game according to the rules, but there is the issue of gentlemanly conduct.
  - MBlume 14y ago
    I got the impression that the professor had anticipated this as a possible outcome, and was intentionally challenging the students to overcome the coordination problem, as he didn't think they'd be able.
  - biot 14y ago
    I think the question hinges on whether or not it was an intended consequence. The professor said: “I had decided that I am sticking to my policy, they had decided to boycott the exam, and that was pretty much it,” Froelich wrote. “The students learned that by coming together, they can achieve something that individually they could never have done.” This seems to indicate he approves. Though now that the previously theoretical concept has been proven, he has changed the rules so that if everyone gets 0 points, then everyone ends up with 0 percent too.
Scriptor 14y ago
It sounds like they were just introductory courses. If they didn't learn anything they'll soon be weeded out by more advanced CS classes.

betterunix 14y ago

"Boycott" is the wrong word here. The students certainly organized themselves, but they were not boycotting -- they were taking advantage of a grading policy that creates an optimal strategy for the students if they work together and cooperate. What these students learned by working together like this is almost certainly more important to their intellectual growth than the exam itself. The professor for the class seems to recognize that, which is also a good thing.

tolmasky 14y ago
It seems that they were preventing other students from going in as well (at least that was the implication with the guarding of doors). So perhaps they actually learned to get what you want through coercion.
- GhotiFish 14y ago
  That, in my opinion, tarnished their achievement. I agree with the sentiment of what was done, but the execution was poor. It would of being a far greater achievement if they didn't enforce the choice.
nicholasjarnold 14y ago
Yes exactly! <personal_anecdote> In high school I had a physics professor who had this exact policy, except that he never imagined the consequences of everybody NOT taking the test. I did, and with the help of a friend we tried to organize the 'boycott'. It failed horribly, but at least we tried. Great story OP! </personal_anecdote>
baddox 14y ago
I think it's an appropriate usage of the term. It's an organized effort to abstain from some specific activity, which is a broad but well-understood definition for "boycott." Nations choosing to not send competitors to the Olympics, for example, is widely called a boycott despite it not having anything to do with purchasing a product or service.
- 14y ago

JoshTriplett 14y ago

If I've gone to all the trouble to study for an exam anyway, just in case, then I'd much rather actually take the exam to check my knowledge. The article tries to paint this result as a case of solidarity and coordination, rather than slacking and intimidation. "on the day of the exam, all the students arrived half an hour early and stood outside the doors to make sure no one went into the exam room"; what is this, a picket line? I had a few classes that had three exams and a final, and the grading policy dropped the lowest exam score. Even when I got 100% or more on the first two exams, and got explicitly told by the professor that the exam was optional and I didn't need to show up, I still took the last one, because why not check the knowledge I studied? Given the intimidation factor, I'd probably end up asking the professor if I could take the exam outside of the normal class time anonymously, and leave people to guess based on who isn't in the same class the next term.

scott_s 14y ago
Intimidation probably played a role in people not taking the exam, but they weren't there soley for intimidation. If someone did walk in to take the exam, they all would have done the same - they were there in case someone did, they would avoid the 0.
- gojomo 14y ago
  Were you there? If not, you don't know how much intimidation may have been applied.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Correct, which is why I said "intimidation probably played a role." I don't know how much, but I find it likely it was there. But my point was that even if they applied no intimidation, they would have still shown up to avoid getting that 0.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  The article said "Some had studied just in case"; "some", not "all".

oskarth 14y ago

Impressive feat. Too bad the class wasn't in Game Theory, that would've been even more isomorphic than the Harvard Intro to Congress class incident. EDIT: Isomorphic used in the sense of the event ("boycott", cheating) being similar in form/geist to the class taken. I'm sure there's a better word for it.

mrdmnd 14y ago
I'm not sure you know what isomorphic means.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  *quickly looks up the definition of 'isomorphism'* Definitions of isomorphism: Find isomorphisms at great prices! Wait, that's not one... strangely makes me want to click through though. 1. Biology: Similarity in form, as in organisms of different ancestry. 2. Mathematics: A one-to-one correspondence between the elements of two sets such that the result of an operation on elements of one set corresponds to the result of the analogous operation on their images in the other set. 3. Chemistry: A close similarity in the crystalline structure of two or more substances of similar chemical composition. Yep, definitely some questionable usage there.
- alex-g 14y ago
  There's a story about a student (in group theory) being asked "Are G and H isomorphic?" and replying "G is isomorphic, but H isn't".
scott_s 14y ago
Another reporting of the incident (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/12/students-boycott-final-challenge-professors-grading-policy-and-get#ixzz2KnL9ysqU http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/12/students-boyco...) actually explains some of the student logic: Andrew Kelly, a student in Fröhlich’s Introduction to Programming class who was one of the boycott’s key organizers, explained the logic of the students' decision via e-mail: "Handing out 0's to your classmates will not improve your performance in this course," Kelly said. This is actually not an interesting problem from the game theory perspective: defection gains you nothing. That is, if you're the only person who defects, your situation is the same if no one had defected. I'm assuming here that the grade curving is local to the assignments. Handing out zeroes to your classmates will help if your overall number of points goes up, and overall number of points in the class determines final grade.

rprospero 14y ago

I remember some friends of mine who did the same thing, except that one kid managed to sneak in and take the exam. Everyone hated him, but his class rank skyrocketed.

Macsenour 14y ago

In my Intro to Computers class we had guest speakers. One speaker/professor was in charge of statistics. Many of the first year CS students left the class. He stopped the 10th one asking where he thought he was going? The student said he had better things to do. This enraged the professor who went on a loud rant about how this really is important and we were awful for not paying attention. He then stormed out. A week later the usual class professor emailed all of saying we had to study the topic on our own since half the class had walked out. I emailed her and the rest of the class that if any of his topic were on the test I would make sure they both were fired at least reprimanded. By the offended professors own words, half the class was still there and interested in the topic. Basically, he walked out on us. His topic was not on the final.

just2n 14y ago
Sounds like the professor was crappy. I'd have said "very well then, have a nice day." Then, at the end of the class, I'd pass around a piece of paper and tell everyone left to write their name on it. We'll call it the "I'm not a douchebag exam." Everyone present would get a 100, everyone else would get a 0. And then I'd still have that content on the "real" exam.
- Macsenour 14y ago
  The next class session someone suggested that we should have signed a paper proving we were there after he left. Hindsight.
jff 14y ago
You come off like an entitled, smug prick, FYI.
- Macsenour 14y ago
  lol
smsm42 14y ago
Really sad story. The professor, of course, should not have walked out, what should have happened instead he should have continued teaching (even if only one student remained in class) and then have as much as possible of these topics on the test. And when people that walked out failed the course they'd have to consider if they want to retake it, this time properly, of choose something else instead.

brador 14y ago

Wait, so if you were the one student who did take the exam you would get 100% and everyone else gets 0?

stcredzero 14y ago

Wait a moment, if all grades are relative to the highest, then aren't all grades a fraction using the highest grade as the denominator? The reason this situation seems unusual: The prof's grading system has a division by zero bug.

littledot5566 14y ago
That's why is the highest grade were to be 0, everyone would get infinite marks that caps at 100.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  How about just put exception handling around the whole thing, then assign 100 to everyone if there's a DivideByZeroException?
lotharbot 14y ago
> "aren't all grades a fraction" Not necessarily. The prof could choose to make grades relative by subtracting rather than dividing. If that was the policy, then someone could've boycotted the boycott by going in and trying to score exactly one point on the exam, possibly after everyone else left. Then everyone else would score a 99. It would have at least given everyone something to think about afterwards.

master_lincoln 14y ago

That makes the point of grading a student's result senseless. I don't even mean the 'boycott' but that Froehlich adapts the grades to the highest received. That would mean if everyone is lazy/stupid they'll all be evaluated better than they are. So why have a grading system in the first place if it doesn't enable you to compare results indepently. (btw I would vote for a grade free teaching system anyways)

lhnn 14y ago
To me, it's a check against a teacher making an obscenely hard test that even the smartest students can't pass. The logic would be that if the best and brightest can only get a 60, then the exam should be curved. This assumes that the best and brightest are actually really smart and knowledgeable.
- scott_s 14y ago
  It's not obvious until you try to create a test yourself that creating a fair test is hard. Particularly for an intro course, since it's material that you know so well that you barely think about it consciously anymore. I took the same approach, and I was cognizant of the fact that some of my students came in with prior programming experience.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  I had a professor once (for modern physics, i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics) who said that if anyone could get 100% on his test, they'd saturate the "sensor" and make the measurement less accurate; he wanted to see the bell curve centered low enough that it didn't get clipped by the maximum score. He calibrated his tests so the highest scores would typically fall in the 50s or 60s, and then applied a curve. Actually getting 100 would require knowing all the material for that course in advance and then some. An interesting, if nerve-wracking, philosophy. :) It's the only time I've ever left a test and not known for sure what grade I'd get.

minimaxir 14y ago

Game theory says that no one cheating and deciding to take the final would be the obvious outcome because the students have no incentive to cheat the system. If they skip the test, they get 100. If they take the test, they get up to 100. No advantage from taking the test. Now, if the maximum score for everyone skipping the test was lower than 100, then things would be interesting.

jff 14y ago
Excellent username/post combo. What if some students believed that the professor would change his mind and change the rules when he realized what was going on?
cperciva 14y ago
Everybody skipping the exam is a Nash equilibrium, but assuming perfectly rational behaviour (and that everybody has a utility function which depends solely on final exam grade) is dangerous. This is, of course, why students turned up and waited outside to see if they needed to write the exam rather than just assuming that other students would all do the "obvious" thing.

gwright 14y ago

I had a 10th grade bio teacher who always gave 50 question multiple choice exams (i.e. 2 points per question). She always offered a 'shoot the moon' option. If you could get every question wrong you would get 100 for the exam instead of 0. Of course if you got one question correct, you would end up with just a 2 for the exam. As I recall there were several successful attempts during the year.

bmcfeeley 14y ago
Are you from Northern NJ? My 10th grade Bio teacher did the same!
- gwright 14y ago
  Nope, but nearby in southwest CT.

deleted 14y ago

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russell 14y ago

My son had a required CS course at UC Berkeley taught by a professor who didnt want to deal with undergraduates. To discourage them he graded his exams more or less as follows: 5 points for getting an answer completely correct, no errors at all; -5 points for any error in the answer, no matter how trivial; 0 points for not answering. Not answering any question was probably a B, but there was such an uproar from the students that the class was turned into pass/fail. My son opted to take it the following semester from a different prof.

pacaro 14y ago
Mathematics at Cambridge is graded in a similar (but far more complicated) interesting way[1] (This is a simplification) - Questions are graded out of 20 and can also be awarded a quality grade. Answers scoring 15 or more are awarded an alpha, those between 10 - 14 inclusive a beta. Alphas and Betas are extremely heavily weighted - the score for the top students is 30 alpha + 5 beta + raw score, so a single question scoring 15 is potentially worth 45, quality is much more important than quality, the pass/fail line is 2 alpha + 1 beta [1] http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/schedules.pdf http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/schedules.pdf
lotharbot 14y ago
My wife had an advanced mathematics course (University of Washington) where leaving an answer blank was worth 30% of the possible points. Any attempted answer was scored starting at 0. This was meant to discourage hard-to-grade, crappy attempts at scoring a few points. Students would skip problems they didn't think they could answer well and focus their attention on problems where they thought they could put together a fairly solid answer.

joezhou 14y ago

this is glorious!

tarahmarie 14y ago

I should have graded my political science classes this way; would have saved me an awful lot of red ink.

VexXtreme 14y ago

I find that the social bullies and self appointed dictators in social groups often try bully people into submission by shaming them for not complying with "what is good for the group". Such cowards are often hiding behind the well being of "the people" and try to make non-comformists look bad. Because if you aren't doing what is good for "the people", you somehow must be evil. Well guess what, you don't owe people shit and they don't owe you shit. You are not responsible for other people unless you are in charge of them, working for the common goal or unless they're your family members. Your classmates are none of these things and you owe them absolutely nothing. It's funny the way bullies will often be the first to betray the group and how it's suddenly "every man for himself" when shit hits the fan.

hakaaaaak 14y ago

And he is not changing his grading system for next year? Next year the students ought to try not even going to class. The positive reinforcement and acceptance of publicity could be compared to the media making a big deal out of Columbine. Whenever bad behavior is made into a spectacle, it will be copied. I will be completely surprised if we don't see more of these events in the coming years, not just because it is possible, but because JH is being fucking stupid by publicizing this.