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Re: honor vs. system



At 10:12 AM 3/19/00 -0800, Shapiro, Mark wrote:

On the more humorous side, when I was taking high school physics back in
1957 from Mr. Glenn Wooley at Santa Ana (California) High School, he would
often refer to the "Wooley honor system". Mr. Wooley had the honor, and the
students had the system. He then would proceed to hand out five different
versions of the same multiple choice test.

Mr. Wooley was a great teacher. He made physics interesting and fun, and
was one the major motivating factors in my decision to major in physics in
college.

Hee, hee. Here's another story in the same vein, as told to me by Don
Myers (University of Arizona).

After a big test (a multiple-choice test), one of the star students comes
up to the front of the room.
Student: Professor Myers, can I ask you a favor?
DM: Sure...
Student: You know that guy who always sits next to me?
DM: Yeah, is he your boyfriend?
Student: No no no, he's a creep. He just sits next to me so he
can copy my work.
DM: Oh.
Student: But I played a trick on him. On my answer sheet, I shifted
all the answers over by one, modulo 4. So when you grade my
test, could you please shift the answer key over by one?
DM: OK, sure, thanks for letting me know.

Now as it turns out, the aforementioned student got them all right. Which
means that the copyist got them all wrong. All of them.

The second act of the drama occurs when the guy comes in to protest his low
score. "Look," he says, "it's multiple choice; even random guessing would
have given me a score of 25%." And Don Myers smiles seraphically and says
"Yyyyyesssss?"