Prof. Ambrose did this. He always gave true false exams -- some of the hardest exams I have ever taken. +1 for correct answers, -1 for incorrect, 0 for not answering, except for all incorrect. Class averages were in the low 20's. There was a rumor that negative class averages had once occurred, but I never saw it. On Aug 29, 2011, at 10:39 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
Wasn't there a math course at MIT in which you could score 200% if you got _all_ the answers wrong? Needless to say, you had to be pretty sure about your answers before turning in a test booklet like this!
At 02:19 PM 8/28/2011, Eugene Salamin wrote:
Here's a news article [ http://news.yahoo.com/ind-vouchers-prompt-thousands-change-schools-170216446... ] with headline "Indiana vouchers prompt thousands to change schools". It looks like, given the freedom to choose and take their money with them, people will desert the public schools.
Not all families have this freedom. Sometimes, it is reserved for economically or scholastically poor students. Here's an idea. A gifted student will normally strive for 100% on these performance exams that have become so important in recent times. Public schools like smart students since the high grades help their rating score and bring increased funding. But suppose instead these students conspire to achieve 0%. Say there are fifty 5-choice questions, 0.8^50 = 1.4e-5, so there's a subtle message in that zero score.
-- Gene
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun