[784] in Humor
HUMOR: College Humor
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Thu Mar 23 10:01:06 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 09:58:21 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 17:26:40 EST
From: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
From: katyking@MIT.EDU
From: kingb@freenet.scri.fsu.edu (Betsy King)
Subject: college humor from HUMOR LIST
The story around Harvard was that there was a graduate Math course
whose final always consisted of "Make up an appropriate final exam for
this course and answer it. You will be graded on both parts."
Then one year, a student answered as follows:
The exam is: "Make up an appropriate final exam for this course and
answer it. You will be graded on both parts." The answer is: "Make
up an appropriate final exam for this course and answer it. You will
be graded on both parts."
His reasoning was that since that was the best exam the professor
could write, it certainly ought to be good enough for a student.
He got an A. The professor specifically prohibited that answer from
then on.
A ``small college story'' going around here (at least three people
have told me this story, each one claiming it was them):
A student, working on a rather long math homework assignment,
discovered that one problem fairly easy to solve, except that it
required about three pages of fairly simple proof after the one
or two difficult steps. It being rather late at night, he did the
difficult steps and left the proof undone, along with a note:
``this proof is left as an exercise for the grader.''
Next week, he received his homework back. He noted that several extra
pages had been stapled to the back of it. Examining the extra pages,
he was surprised to find the entire proof written down step-by step.
At the end, in red pen, the grader had written:
``I made a minor math error. minus 2.''
From: reg@pinet.aip.org (Dr. Richard Glass)
While taking a psych. course in college, the teacher had a habit of
putting the following questions on an exam:
"Ask yourself a question and answer it"
Being a math major,
I asked myself "Solve the following differential equation [* equation
deleted *] under the following conditions [* conditions deleted *]"
and proceeded to solve it.
The next day I stopped by the math office to see one of the profs. He
told me "go away, I'm stuck grading your stupid psych. exam"
I got full credit, and the psych prof. never put that question on an
exam again.
