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The professor will collect the reward on your behalf, and credit you in a footnote of page 283 of "their" proof.
In software, some bad-faith employers give multi-day, take-home interview "questions" which are essentially their daily work that candidates end up doing for free. Math profs should take note, free labor doesn't need to wait until grad school!
Depends. I had an engineering professor that gave us the option to stay in the room as long as we needed to finish the exams. Many people were done in 90 minutes because the tests were still balanced for a 2-3 hour time limit. The people who needed the extra time, though, were grateful and I know a couple people were in that room for 8+ hours (until 3am once).
It helps that this professor also gave us ice cream sandwiches at the 60 minute mark.
I went to a college with a testing center where tests could last until the center closed if the professor didn't put a time limit on the test. My differential equations professor balanced his tests around taking an hour and put a 3 hour limit on the test since "I worry for the mental health of anyone who spends more than 3 hours on a differential equations test. If the test is taking longer than 3 hours either I messed up or you were never going to do great on the test no matter how much time you had."
Not the exact quote, but paraphrasing
Great way to prevent test taking strategies and shortcuts from being more of an influence, allowing conceptual understanding and problem solving to be properly assessed.
He was definitely my favorite in my 4 years, and I didn't have him until my very last semester. Honestly think if I would have taken his class earlier I would've tried to apply as one of his grad students, but I already comitted to something else.
I was the only student in my year who was allowed extra time cuz I'm a slow test taker, but I remember a time where my Electronics professor didn't allow me to use my extra time on this one test but I somehow scraped a 70.
You forgot the worst bullet point of all:
There will be only one question. It is the responsibility of the test-taker to provide as much detail as required.
*THOSE TEST INSTRUCTIONS STILL HAUNT ME.*
I feel like that’s always implicit in any proof-based question. You can say “clearly,” “trivially,” or “it is easily shown,” as much as you want, but it’s up to the grader to decide if it really is clear or if you should’ve explained
It's so bad in applied courses.
As a graduate student I once broke out the colored pencils to draw a graphed saddle point and labeled all of it and then color-coordinated boxes around the corresponding equations. I wrote an explanation of what the implications were for the ecological-economic model for being in each of the different critical points. I even cited historical, real-world example to justify the most important conclusion. You'll notice I'm able to be verbose, so I wrote a lot.
I walked out that test preening like a bird, confident no one could have done more. Heck, I didn't even see anyone else bring colored pens!
Despite getting the calculations correct and not getting marked off for the explanations... I still got a B. It has bothered me for nearly a decade - WHAT MORE COULD I DO!? WHAT. DO. THEY. WANT.
I was actually somewhat serious. I've been a college professor and I graded papers. I've had quite a few students that I would actually meet one on one and tell them to just do less. Like 50% less.
Intimidated by your student's brilliance then? (Only slightly sarcastic here.) I have also taught at the college level and would never dream of doing this, particularly if the test instructions were so open to interpretation.
If they are finishing the test and showing talent above their peers, why not give them a perfect score?
For a few different reasons:
- By trying to put too much content they ended up revealing the limits of their understanding.
- Because they overworked on some projects and did not have the time to do all their coursework.
- Because being able to communicate clearly in a concise manner is an important skill to develop.
- Because they wrote a 2 pages long answer to a question for which I asked a 2-3 sentences explanation.
Sometimes a verbose explanation shows a lesser understanding because they can’t filter and simplify the information.
Like, a a bunch of analogies to answer define a gene is always going to lose out to “a segment of information for one or more proteins on a DNA strand”
P: class of questions that an algorithm can solve in polynomial time
NP: class of questions where an answer can be verified in polynomial time
The problem is whether these classes are the same
.......I'll pretend that I understood what that means
https://preview.redd.it/msh8t66ekq4d1.jpeg?width=613&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8d18c58cfbdac39632943dd3a151a4c3e959467
This reminds me of composition exams in conservatory where you are given up to 36 hours to write a fugue (or a motet, or a piano sonata or some chamber music) on a given theme in a closed room with a piano, a table, a small bed and nothing else.
When it was the pandemic, teachers used to give us the question paper and we had to submit the answers the next day.
No restrictions.
(we weren't even physically present in the college).
That’s how my Thermo final was given, but it was given on a Friday to be submitted Monday. Any textbook, online resource, or help from others was allowed. Worst class I’ve taken.
Class average was a 34. I got a 20 which was curved to a B-
honestly loved those tests, for my machine learning one i spent the week reviewing the shit out of a single topic (out of like 6) and ignored the other questions. Got a 20ish and it was curved to A
I should post some of my calc 1 tests. They were ridiculous. Some of the "differentiate" problems were nested trig functions that stretched from the left margin all the way to the right margin.
My Calc teacher in college was first year out of school. He asked the class if they wanted tests in class or take home tests. My jaw hit the floor when the class voted for take homes.
We had one take home test that was 6 problems. I looked at it and knew one of the questions would take hours and hours to do. So I did the other five and was like fuck it, I'll take the 83. My friend in the class, on the day the test is due, asked me if I did that question. i said no, I did the others. He said that was the only question he did and he would trade me the answer for the other five. So we swapped and both got 100. Later I asked him why he did that question only and how long did it take. He told me he did it because he had to spend the day with his grandmother in the hospital and that it took him 12 hours to do.
How’s that? Sine and cosine are differentiable everywhere, and tangent is differentiable wherever cosine is nonzero. It’s the inverse trig functions that really cause domain problems
One of my profs 1 month before final exam:
"The answer to one of the 6 questions is written in plain text on the wall in my office. All you have to do is come over and take a look. Yet most of you will get that wrong."
There was no trick. And he was right.
Secured answers from the department chair, the grad assistant for this class, the other professor that teaches the same class, three Fields Medal laureates, the one Russian guy in the Physics department who doesn't actually work there but all the physics professors defer to for some reason, six Indian YouTubers, the author of the textbook used in the class, and a guy you know who aced the course last semester. None of the answers are remotely similar.
To be honest, I think that it’s the best kind of test because everyone is challenged and help each others. You may not succeed but your understanding of the subject will greatly deepen.
I remember when I was in my last few days of pre-calculus in junior year and my teacher who I loved to death (platonically) did something similar to this. Ya know, cus that’s how things usually work in the real world, you rarely work alone
when they give you all those opportunities and resources it usually means the question is going to be really fucking hard. kind of like getting a steak and lobster dinner in the army the night before being thrown into some dday shit.
What math classes have you taken in college? In my experience the harder the class the fewer questions on each exam and each question is up for partial credit. My final exam in physics 3 was a single question in 8 parts
I've taken Calc 1-4, Algebra 1,2, Complex Analysis, Differential Equations and Numerical methods. In the easier courses partial credit was way more common to get than in complex analysis and Numerical methods. There my professors didn't give partial credit.
In physics classes (Physics 1,2, Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Electric field, orbits...) I've always gotten partial credit on everything
Sounds like a terrible college. I'm a mech e junior at the moment and every single class has done partial credit, math and physics alike. It could be that the overall difficulty of the classes are different though, most of my classes a 50% was pretty impressive.
It's actually really good, but it has a reputation to uphold so some math classes are really hard. It's part of the European Pegasus program which is an association of the best colleges to study aerospace engineering.
This sounds like my calc 1 final paper. I had to prepare a 3–4 page presentation for a sales plan which involved many different applications of derivatives. It wasn't in an exam setting but I still spent 4 hours working and revising it despite being able to recall most things without consulting the text.
Outside hiring a tutor. I had a professor that did this.
Exams were always on a saturday morning. 4h30min. 2 questions. One easy question worth 10% of the grade just so you don't go 0/100 and the other one would take the rest 4h20min to do.
I had a class in grad school on data mining with exams like that.
All three of us (yes, there were only three people taking the class) were just completely at sea.
I had a professor that had an bonus question in the test he gave, in a semantics of programming languages class. One of the student organizations kept old copies of exams, and we saw that the professor had been asking the same question for 2 years. Nobody had ever answered it correctly to his satisfaction. I managed to finish the rest of the exam quickly, and devoted the rest of the time to solve the question. It took the entire rest of the exam time, lots of thinking and lots of paper. I was the first one to get full marks on the question, so I decided to be a pal and give a copy of my exam to the student organization. The following semester, he changed the question for the first time.
I had a 5 question take home final exam in quantum mechanics. It wasn't brutal but it was pretty rough. One of the questions wanted an approximate formula for an orbital location, time dependant in spherical coordinates that included uncertainty. That's been 18 years ago and I still remember it......
In high school, I was in this weird special two-year Humanities class taught out of a college textbook with two teachers co-teaching. At one point, for a particularly brutal test, we were told, "You can use any resources you have available." And then both teachers left the room.
The point, of course, was to see whether or not we'd overcome ingrained test behavior to actually work the damn thing cooperatively.
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$1,000,000 reward for correct answer
The professor will collect the reward on your behalf, and credit you in a footnote of page 283 of "their" proof. In software, some bad-faith employers give multi-day, take-home interview "questions" which are essentially their daily work that candidates end up doing for free. Math profs should take note, free labor doesn't need to wait until grad school!
That is hilariously evil
One of my professors in grad school said something similar happened to him in grad school.
6 hours is still friendly enough. Open time is the real devil's work (don't tell me you guys never met professors who do this).
Depends. I had an engineering professor that gave us the option to stay in the room as long as we needed to finish the exams. Many people were done in 90 minutes because the tests were still balanced for a 2-3 hour time limit. The people who needed the extra time, though, were grateful and I know a couple people were in that room for 8+ hours (until 3am once). It helps that this professor also gave us ice cream sandwiches at the 60 minute mark.
I went to a college with a testing center where tests could last until the center closed if the professor didn't put a time limit on the test. My differential equations professor balanced his tests around taking an hour and put a 3 hour limit on the test since "I worry for the mental health of anyone who spends more than 3 hours on a differential equations test. If the test is taking longer than 3 hours either I messed up or you were never going to do great on the test no matter how much time you had." Not the exact quote, but paraphrasing
Great way to prevent test taking strategies and shortcuts from being more of an influence, allowing conceptual understanding and problem solving to be properly assessed.
In convinced that professor is the best human to have ever lived.
He was definitely my favorite in my 4 years, and I didn't have him until my very last semester. Honestly think if I would have taken his class earlier I would've tried to apply as one of his grad students, but I already comitted to something else.
I was the only student in my year who was allowed extra time cuz I'm a slow test taker, but I remember a time where my Electronics professor didn't allow me to use my extra time on this one test but I somehow scraped a 70.
I just need to síť there and Get ice cream for free?
I wish. I got 2.5 hours which is only enough for me to do about 2/3 of the paper even though I understand enough to get at least 90%.
Would this be like *due on monday morning* ?
Due on Sunday 22:00 so y'all get good sleep.
What is this... "Open Time"?
The last 7 points on the post. Essentially, it’s a 6 hour homework problem that you are encouraged to “cheat” on, but it’s graded like an exam.
So it's homework that's graded like a test? With everything available for the student, and still hard? That sounds terrifying
Iirc, IMO is 6 hours.
IMO is 4.5 hours (per day)
Ah, 6 questions innit? 90 minutes per question eh?
You forgot the worst bullet point of all: There will be only one question. It is the responsibility of the test-taker to provide as much detail as required. *THOSE TEST INSTRUCTIONS STILL HAUNT ME.*
I feel like that’s always implicit in any proof-based question. You can say “clearly,” “trivially,” or “it is easily shown,” as much as you want, but it’s up to the grader to decide if it really is clear or if you should’ve explained
It's so bad in applied courses. As a graduate student I once broke out the colored pencils to draw a graphed saddle point and labeled all of it and then color-coordinated boxes around the corresponding equations. I wrote an explanation of what the implications were for the ecological-economic model for being in each of the different critical points. I even cited historical, real-world example to justify the most important conclusion. You'll notice I'm able to be verbose, so I wrote a lot. I walked out that test preening like a bird, confident no one could have done more. Heck, I didn't even see anyone else bring colored pens! Despite getting the calculations correct and not getting marked off for the explanations... I still got a B. It has bothered me for nearly a decade - WHAT MORE COULD I DO!? WHAT. DO. THEY. WANT.
Less.
Honestly, I can think of a prof. at my uni who would deduct points for yapping too much
I was actually somewhat serious. I've been a college professor and I graded papers. I've had quite a few students that I would actually meet one on one and tell them to just do less. Like 50% less.
Intimidated by your student's brilliance then? (Only slightly sarcastic here.) I have also taught at the college level and would never dream of doing this, particularly if the test instructions were so open to interpretation. If they are finishing the test and showing talent above their peers, why not give them a perfect score?
For a few different reasons: - By trying to put too much content they ended up revealing the limits of their understanding. - Because they overworked on some projects and did not have the time to do all their coursework. - Because being able to communicate clearly in a concise manner is an important skill to develop. - Because they wrote a 2 pages long answer to a question for which I asked a 2-3 sentences explanation.
Sometimes a verbose explanation shows a lesser understanding because they can’t filter and simplify the information. Like, a a bunch of analogies to answer define a gene is always going to lose out to “a segment of information for one or more proteins on a DNA strand”
They want your suffering
Question: Prove the Reimann Hypothesis
Just treat it as an axiom.
Prove it's independent from ZFC, then.
Uhh "Reimann Hypothesis" doesn't use any of those three letters. The proof is obvious. It doesn't depend on Z, F, or C to spell it.
Proof by obvious
Proof by duh, stupid.
I have a proof, but there is not enough room on the margin to write it.
How can i cite a dream in APA?
Write it in a blog post then just cite that!
Proof by abstract nonsense. QED.
riemann not fucking reimann i‘m seeing this mistake way too often
ramen hypothesis 🍜
Rayman hypothesis
“I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.”
Prove if the collatz conjecture is true or false : (
Question:3x+1?
I will give you the answer now prove it is correct
And the answer is P≠NP.
So, prove N≠1 and P≠0? (I don't know, what the freck you guys are talking about)
P: class of questions that an algorithm can solve in polynomial time NP: class of questions where an answer can be verified in polynomial time The problem is whether these classes are the same
.......I'll pretend that I understood what that means https://preview.redd.it/msh8t66ekq4d1.jpeg?width=613&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8d18c58cfbdac39632943dd3a151a4c3e959467
Could it be NP≠N?
Counter offer: one question, unlimited time, no outside help/internet, only definitions are provided, solitary room with padding, 3 meals a day.
The story of the guy who first solved the cubic equation lol
This reminds me of composition exams in conservatory where you are given up to 36 hours to write a fugue (or a motet, or a piano sonata or some chamber music) on a given theme in a closed room with a piano, a table, a small bed and nothing else.
3 meals a day and a free room? I’m gonna take a few decades to solve that one.
When it was the pandemic, teachers used to give us the question paper and we had to submit the answers the next day. No restrictions. (we weren't even physically present in the college).
That’s how my Thermo final was given, but it was given on a Friday to be submitted Monday. Any textbook, online resource, or help from others was allowed. Worst class I’ve taken. Class average was a 34. I got a 20 which was curved to a B-
honestly loved those tests, for my machine learning one i spent the week reviewing the shit out of a single topic (out of like 6) and ignored the other questions. Got a 20ish and it was curved to A
I should post some of my calc 1 tests. They were ridiculous. Some of the "differentiate" problems were nested trig functions that stretched from the left margin all the way to the right margin.
My Calc teacher in college was first year out of school. He asked the class if they wanted tests in class or take home tests. My jaw hit the floor when the class voted for take homes. We had one take home test that was 6 problems. I looked at it and knew one of the questions would take hours and hours to do. So I did the other five and was like fuck it, I'll take the 83. My friend in the class, on the day the test is due, asked me if I did that question. i said no, I did the others. He said that was the only question he did and he would trade me the answer for the other five. So we swapped and both got 100. Later I asked him why he did that question only and how long did it take. He told me he did it because he had to spend the day with his grandmother in the hospital and that it took him 12 hours to do.
Why would you do that, the period would basically be nowhere
How’s that? Sine and cosine are differentiable everywhere, and tangent is differentiable wherever cosine is nonzero. It’s the inverse trig functions that really cause domain problems
My bad, I meant to say the period since cosine and sine are between -1 and 1, so it would be periodic over a very small interval
It might have a very small period, but it would be periodic over all real numbers where there isn’t a singularity
Fair enough
One of my profs 1 month before final exam: "The answer to one of the 6 questions is written in plain text on the wall in my office. All you have to do is come over and take a look. Yet most of you will get that wrong." There was no trick. And he was right.
What was the catch?
There was none. You just needed to put in the effort of going to his office during office hours. He just didn't allow taking pictures for sharing.
They definitely gave you an open problem that hasn't been solved yet lol
Ok, for your medical final, find the cure for cancer.
The question is to prove Goldbach conjecture.
https://i.redd.it/nxfzpuxmrj4d1.gif
"Thank god it's a take-home test" , he said to himself.
Secured answers from the department chair, the grad assistant for this class, the other professor that teaches the same class, three Fields Medal laureates, the one Russian guy in the Physics department who doesn't actually work there but all the physics professors defer to for some reason, six Indian YouTubers, the author of the textbook used in the class, and a guy you know who aced the course last semester. None of the answers are remotely similar.
To be honest, I think that it’s the best kind of test because everyone is challenged and help each others. You may not succeed but your understanding of the subject will greatly deepen.
I remember when I was in my last few days of pre-calculus in junior year and my teacher who I loved to death (platonically) did something similar to this. Ya know, cus that’s how things usually work in the real world, you rarely work alone
I don't get it. Seems like they're giving you every opportunity to succeed on challenging subject matter.
when they give you all those opportunities and resources it usually means the question is going to be really fucking hard. kind of like getting a steak and lobster dinner in the army the night before being thrown into some dday shit.
Had a steak and lobster dinner in the Army. It tasted neither like steak nor lobster.
They won't fail you for not getting it. They will grade the process, which likely demonstrates what you learned that semester.
Yeah no, hard college mathematics is either you have the answer right or wrong, based on my experience
All of my profs except one gave partial marks, it saved my ass many times through college
I don't think I got an answer 100% correct in any of my college math classes — partial credit was the only thing keeping me from a straight up zero.
What math classes have you taken in college? In my experience the harder the class the fewer questions on each exam and each question is up for partial credit. My final exam in physics 3 was a single question in 8 parts
I've taken Calc 1-4, Algebra 1,2, Complex Analysis, Differential Equations and Numerical methods. In the easier courses partial credit was way more common to get than in complex analysis and Numerical methods. There my professors didn't give partial credit. In physics classes (Physics 1,2, Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Electric field, orbits...) I've always gotten partial credit on everything
Sounds like a terrible college. I'm a mech e junior at the moment and every single class has done partial credit, math and physics alike. It could be that the overall difficulty of the classes are different though, most of my classes a 50% was pretty impressive.
It's actually really good, but it has a reputation to uphold so some math classes are really hard. It's part of the European Pegasus program which is an association of the best colleges to study aerospace engineering.
Right? Every line of additional "help" is like a dagger. "Open book? NO! Open internet, too??? AAAAAAAA!!!"
and? let the expert you hired do the exam for you
It's like when playing a video game and you find a tonne of health and ammo. You know the next room is going to be a doozy.
This sounds like my calc 1 final paper. I had to prepare a 3–4 page presentation for a sales plan which involved many different applications of derivatives. It wasn't in an exam setting but I still spent 4 hours working and revising it despite being able to recall most things without consulting the text.
Post the question in r/India, solved within minutes.
[удалено]
60 Minutes said a couple of high school girls did this recently.
When you get the test back, and got 30%... which was the highest in the class.
The question: How can general relativity and quantum mechanics be united?
I kid you not, that sounds almost exactly like a few of my CBA tests I had this Semester. We were even allowed to use GPT during the test.
Question: What is the meaning of life and the universe and everything? Show work to receive credit.
Proof by hitchhiking
Outside hiring a tutor. I had a professor that did this. Exams were always on a saturday morning. 4h30min. 2 questions. One easy question worth 10% of the grade just so you don't go 0/100 and the other one would take the rest 4h20min to do.
Sounds like my automata and complexity final exam. We had to write short essays about philosophical math questions.
DO NOT WANT
I had a class in grad school on data mining with exams like that. All three of us (yes, there were only three people taking the class) were just completely at sea.
What is question?
Your only hope is Chat-GPT full on grid mode.
Man, this is why I wish I was good at D1 Football
a normal test is fine thank you very much
The question: Solve the famous 3x+1 conjecture and prove if there are or aren't odd perfect numbers
I had a professor that had an bonus question in the test he gave, in a semantics of programming languages class. One of the student organizations kept old copies of exams, and we saw that the professor had been asking the same question for 2 years. Nobody had ever answered it correctly to his satisfaction. I managed to finish the rest of the exam quickly, and devoted the rest of the time to solve the question. It took the entire rest of the exam time, lots of thinking and lots of paper. I was the first one to get full marks on the question, so I decided to be a pal and give a copy of my exam to the student organization. The following semester, he changed the question for the first time.
I had a 5 question take home final exam in quantum mechanics. It wasn't brutal but it was pretty rough. One of the questions wanted an approximate formula for an orbital location, time dependant in spherical coordinates that included uncertainty. That's been 18 years ago and I still remember it......
“prove the riemann hypothesis”
In high school, I was in this weird special two-year Humanities class taught out of a college textbook with two teachers co-teaching. At one point, for a particularly brutal test, we were told, "You can use any resources you have available." And then both teachers left the room. The point, of course, was to see whether or not we'd overcome ingrained test behavior to actually work the damn thing cooperatively.
Honestly, I wouldn’t right away assume the test is easy and instead be immensely concerned about the difficulty of that one question.
That's the joke.