[LAU] Exam Cheating investigation

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 01:24:22PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

> I'm sorry if that reflects poorly on the composer of that particular exam, 
> but what you want, is not to test the memory of the test taker, but to test 
> their powers of deduction. 

Even so, students taking a course on the history of Western classical
music should be able to identify Pierrot Lunaire without requiring
internet resources. More so if during the course they had the opportunity
to hear it. And I don't agree with the idea that knowledge (as opposed to
the application of it) is a thing of the past. If I had to look up every
equation I use on Wikipedia I'd consider myself to be a very lousy DSP
programmer.

> I learned to do square roots on paper, probably something over 70 years 
> ago, but today I'd have to use a calculator AND the answer would have to 
> make sense 

You'd be surprised to know the percentage of people that would 
accept *any* result from a calculator, even if it doesn't make
sense at all.

When I was in high school most math or physics teachers would
accept an error in the calculations for an exam problem if the
logic of the solution was right. But I had one who didn't. His
reasoning was that if you make a stupid calculation error as an
engineer, the result would be as useless as if you didn't grasp
the problem at all. The bridge would collapse or the airplane
would fall out of the sky. And he was right. Remember the 10^8
dollar NASA Mars probe that got lost because JPL was using 
imperial units while NASA expected metric ones ?


Ciao,

-- 
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)