
Why Flunking Exams Is Actually a Good Thing - uger
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/magazine/why-flunking-exams-is-actually-a-good-thing.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0
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WalterBright
> believing that because facts or formulas or arguments are easy to remember
> right now, they will remain that way tomorrow or the next day.

This is sad, it confuses education with memorization. I was fortunate in
winding up at Caltech, which had a policy of open book / open note exams. The
idea wasn't to memorize formulae, it was to learn how derive the formulae and
then apply them properly.

For example, in AMA95 one of the lectures went through deriving the fourier
transforms. On the final exam one of the questions was to derive the
hyperbolic transforms. If you understood the fourier ones, you could derive
the hyperbolic ones. If not, well, you were lost.

In Physics 2, one lecture showed how the characteristics of magnetism could be
derived from the idea of electric charges. An exam question was to show the
characteristics of electric fields given the existence of magnetic monopoles.

Anybody can look up a formula in a book, and then misuse it.

~~~
batbomb
If you majored in physics, you'd probably come to find out this isn't specific
to CalTech, but it's typically specific to hard sciences and engineering
disciplines.

Probably 80% of the physics courses I've taken (and people that I know have
taken) are almost all like this. Open Note and/or Open Note+Homework and/or
Open Book (and occasionally open laptop), typically with a class averages of
around 40-70% on the exam

~~~
btoptical
Yep at Univ. of Rochester as physics undergrads we were often allowed a single
sheet of paper with anything on it (we were told no microfiche!). I did a few
open book exams but still made the "cheat" sheet. We all spent a great deal of
time preparing that sheet. You had to study to really know what to put on the
sheet. I often found that I did not need the sheet in the actual exam because
the process of preparing it helped to bring the concepts forward in my mind.

In grad school as classes got more difficult, we had take home exams even. I
always dreaded these because they were substantially more difficult than a
regular exam. Generally if you didn't have the concepts down, having an entire
library at your disposal was not helpful in that case.

~~~
snogglethorpe
The "cheat sheet" thing was common at my university too.

It often turned into an exercise in finding the extreme bottom limit to how
small one could write (and turned me into a fan of Pilot Hi-Tec 0.25mm pens!),
so I always wondered how carefully considered the limitation to _one_ sheet
was... did they actually try out different limits and choose the one that
worked best?

More limitation forces students to think about what they're including instead
of just copying the textbook onto paper, but even a slight relaxation to 4-5
pieces of paper would have _really_ helped in many cases, and allowed us to
focus more on the material and less on the physical chore of preparation...

~~~
pdkl95
The engineering dept at UCDavis went well beyond a single page, and usually
allowed anything you wanted as long as it was print-only, book included.
(nothing electronic or networked, obviously)

The idea was 1) in the real world, you have reference material which you
should know how to use, and 2) test length did NOT include any extra time to
look things up.

If you knew the material and just needed a quick check of some detail, you
could look it up without any problem because you didn't have to search. On the
other hand, if you were trying to teach yourself some concept _during_ the
test, the wasted time would probably impact how much of the test you were able
to complete.

I liked that system - it seemed rather generous coming from "nothing allowed"
tests in earlier schooling, and it had a side benefit of reducing the number
of profs that badly reused exam questions or lazily used textbook-provided
questions.

/* Yes, this policy caused some of us to find the one printer on campus that
printed on A3 paper with duplex support, so we could print an electronic-only
reference book at 24 pages/sheet (if I remember correctly...) */

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gone35
I'm disappointed this kind of disingenuous Gladwellese keeps making its way to
the HN front page.

Despite what the article claims, "pretesting" is not a thing (yet) in
psychology. The whole premise of the article hinges on _one_ unpublished study
by a single research group [1], one that didn't even administer a full
"prefinal" at that. The effect is intriguing and might or might not be
"significant" (no way to verify oneself); but either way a single,
unpublished, unreplicated study does _not_ an "exciting development in
learning science" emerging from "a variety of experiments" make, as the
article pretends.

But then it wouldn't make as clean a narrative, would it.

[1] [http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/](http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/)

~~~
sesqu
I've only ever encountered pre-tests on Udacity. For what it's worth, my
experience of them was entirely negative.

That said, I've encountered several variations on the theme that lead me to
believe there is a wider "thing" in education about activation and
reinforcement.

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j2kun
What is up with the questions used in the pretest? From the article:

> Which of the following is true of scientific explanations?

> a. They are less likely to be verified by empirical observation than other
> types of explanations.

> b. They are accepted because they come from a trusted source or authority
> figure.

> c. They are accepted only provisionally.

> d. In the face of evidence that is inconsistent with a scientific
> explanation, the evidence will be questioned.

> e. All of the above are true about scientific explanations.

If I were taking this pretest, it would be accompanied by the realization that
most of my work in the class would be dealing with a mountain of
oversimplifications and generalizations. So maybe the goal of the pretest is
to inhibit my critical thinking to the point where I just think the way the
professor expects and try to maximize my chance of filling in the right
bubble.

A better question might be something describing historical evidence rather
than forcing the respondent to make a claim about truth. Like: according to
the research of [researcher and colleagues], 80% of survey respondents said
their primary reason for accepting a scientific explanation was...

These would be much better at providing cues for the student later on, since
they now have a name and a number to attach to the claim being made.

~~~
igravious
Judging from the questions these are probably first year college students.

What the question is trying to elucidate here is if the student has a working
conception of how scientific explanations work. I'm not sure how you are
getting from there to "a mountain of oversimplifications and generalizations".
I know from personal experience tutoring first year students that they can
have a very (and I mean very) shaky grasp of what it even means for something
to be scientific rather than unscientific. This groundwork has to be in place
before students can proceed to digest any science, in this case psychology no
doubt. If anything knowing about the ways in which our beliefs can be (rightly
or wrongly) formed will only aid critical thinking.

I think the question is an OK question and that the question you would replace
it with obscures what the student needs to learn about. In fact, if you don't
mind me saying, I think your replacement question quite odd.

~~~
j2kun
My problem is that the question is entirely unscientific. There are reasonable
interpretations and arguments for both sides of every potential answer. This
is why basing a question on actual facts (such as, what was this particular
scientist's argument, or what was found in that study) is a better idea.

~~~
igravious
Not everything can be covered by science.

Not everything that is not covered by science is bad.

Some of the things that are not covered by science are bad: these include
pseudo-scientific beliefs like astrology, religious belief, and so on.

The question here is to do with knowledge and scientific explanation. This is
the subject matter of epistemology (the study of knowledge in and of itself)
and philosophy of science (how something gets to be scientific in the first
place). You are right that it is entirely unscientific but you are wrong that
think that as a result it should be rejected. Not everything that is
unscientific should be rejected, this is one instance of that. You need to
learn the distinction between science and philosophy of science.

~~~
j2kun
Is this not a scientific analysis of a science-based course (psychology)? How
could unscientific things be good in this context?

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quarterwave
Years ago in college, for the toughest course I'd carefully pick an advanced
textbook - something one or two levels ahead of the current one - and soak
myself in that. Example: for an introductory quantum mechanics course I read
Dirac's book, then supplemented this with Russian problem books - they were
the best & came with answer gists. I would freely look up answers for the
tough problems, then go back and see if I could come up with a better way.
After this regimen, the course itself became a minor formality.

I realized only much later that this was an obsessive approach, like buying
chess books after losing early in one's first tournament. There was no sense
of carpe diem, it was about owlishly building up a 10:1 advantage before
closing in.

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joshstrange
This isn't too surprising, I remember before taking the ACT (or any test with
some sort of a "Reading Comprehension" section) I would read the questions
before I read the selected reading so that I knew what I was looking for.

~~~
baddox
From what I remember, the reading section of the ACT has its questions ordered
roughly in the same order as the relevant reading material. That made it
almost trivial to just alternate between reading a question and reading the
material until you find the answer.

~~~
joshstrange
That was my experience as well.

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jimcsharp
Isn't this the point behind Quizzes? You don't treat them like tests, you bomb
what you're gonna bomb, and you improve for the real thing.

~~~
LanceH
The primary purpose quizzes as they are generally applied to to check to make
sure you've been attending lectures, reading the material, doing the homework,
etc... They may indirectly prepare a student for a test, but mostly it is to
enforce the work plan (which should help a student on the test).

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jere
In college, I had a fairly consistent habit of bombing the first exam in a
class and then going on to ace the class anyway. I got a 50 on my first exam
in my very first class, Calc III. It's like I didn't take a class seriously
until I was in panic mode. There are some parallels between my struggles with
procrastination I think.

~~~
icebraining
[http://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ch-last-
minute...](http://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ch-last-minute-
panic.gif)

------
lazyant
training as close as the real thing is the best kind of practice, see sports
training for ex.

------
JetSpiegel
Worked for Holden Caulfield...

