Monday, October 31, 2005
I give up.
Almost 10% of my class believes, "Ockham's Razor is used in the preparation of homeopathic remedies."
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About Me
- Angry Professor
- I am a tenured faculty member at a large state university. My teaching efforts primarily consist of delivering statistics lectures to social science majors. These experiences have colored my perspective somewhat.
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13 comments:
Multiple choice exam, right? So 10% didn't know the answer and didn't know enough to make a better guess. I only hope it's a large class of the type that gets a lot of students that are trying to cruise their way through (e.g. a general education class).
Right. Still, that was supposed to be the "dud alternative." I am encouraged that no one selected "performed in complete darkness" as the correct choice for "A double-blinded experiment is..."
Once, for a midterm exam in communication, I had a student select "norms for cooking fondue" as the definition of "melting pot policy"!
Ha ha. That's funny. And sad.
Perhaps you could use an Ockham's Razor to slit your wrists? ;->
too many of my students chose Fanny Farmer as the feminist philosopher who wrote "if men could mensturate." I, too, meant it as the dud option.
Hahahahahaha.
I have no words. Was the original question about homeopathy or about Occam's Razor?
It asked what Ockham's Razor was. Several of the questions on the exam had "is used in the preparation of homeopathic remedies" as an option.
It's enough to make you cry. Or at least drink. A lot.
What I want to know is, was "is used in the preparation of homeopathic remedies" the simplest solution to the question? Just kidding.
I once had a little space left at the end of a multiple choice exam. It was a tough exam, so I thought that I'd give them a give-me question. I asked what was the brightest object visible in the sky? The choices were the Sun, Moon, North Star, Venus, Sirius. Nearly 20% of the class missed it.
A colleague of mine once asked on the final exam of a large (200 student) lecture for the name of the course's professor. Nearly 15% missed it.
Sometimes, you just wonder if you are getting through.
Perhaps that 10% of the class figured that choice was the simplest answer and must therefore be correct.
Hanlon's Razor:
``Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity''.
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