
Prof. calls out student for cheating via Math StackExchange - agconway
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/256816/if-n-the-order-of-a-group-and-gcdk-n-1-then-there-exists-an-element-in?__=650705013#comment562583_256816
======
theologic
After spending 9 years in school, I have very little regard for Professors
that both don't understand how this generation of kids work, nor understand
that take home finals in technical fields such as math have zero merit.

The smart kids are always going to be penalized because the cheating kids are
going to ask for help. In other words, this kid got caught. We can discuss if
this kid should have known that he was cheating or not (and I believe that
there is good evidence that modern kids have a difficult time grasping the
idea of original work). That is both a process and a procedure that colleges
should teach kids. Ethics 101 should be a required course.

(Then again, Allen and Gates bought DOS from Seattle Computing Products and
sold it as their own.)

My problem is the other 50% of the kids that find a friend that can help them,
and thereby cheat but have no avenue to be caught.

Simple solution is to have tests in class on a sample of the work done during
the quarter/semester. If you can't do this, then you don't understand how to
test for knowledge

While this won't stop cheating, it should bring it down dramatically. The best
way to slow cheating is to not give an opportunity to cheat in the first
place.

~~~
jeremyarussell
In the past ethics 101 was taught by parents, somewhere along the way they
became incapable of raising kids properly. Anyone with proper work ethic will
understand that this kid was asking for someone to walk him through or do his
question. Not get an idea fleshed out.

I would think it's still a parents job to guide a kid properly in the realm of
ethics, maybe we should place more responsibility of the children onto the
parents. (mind you this I'm not touching the fact that they really can't prove
the kid is who he is, I'm just referring to the ethics aspect.)

~~~
stuaxo
Which bit of the past is this, certainly not during the era of the robber
baron industrialists ... maybe between now and then - or before then ..?

~~~
jeremyarussell
My point wasn't about the quality of ethics, but that it's being left to
schools and not the, you know, parents.

\--I suppose since I used the word properly I invited an argument of quality.
I did mainly mean to refer to to the who and not the how well though.

~~~
illuminate
"My point wasn't about the quality of ethics, but that it's being left to
schools and not the, you know, parents."

Your mistake lies in assuming that parents before were somehow a better source
of "ethics" than parents now. History books are always exceedingly kind to
prior generations.

------
mekoka
So, does this mean I can register an account on Math StackExchange and ask for
help with an alias, which is possibly a fellow student's actual name and that
person will be penalized for my cheating?

~~~
crusso
As with the recording industry, the teaching industry's business model needs
to change. Grading students on homework that can easily be googled is no
longer an acceptable means of assessing work and aptitude.

~~~
evandena
I heard a cool piece on NPR the other day, talking about the benefits some
schools and students are seeing by implementing flip teaching. Essentially,
the hour long lectures are presented as a podcast/video/whatever and are to be
viewed at home. This allows the students (and parents for that matter) to take
as much time as needed, rewind, etc.

Then at class, the students do their homework, with the teacher helping and
grading the work.

I'm really intrigued by this, and think there is a future for this method,
given how technology has progressed.

~~~
stephencanon
That's actually more-or-less the "traditional" british and american method of
teaching (at least at the college level); historically, one was expected to
show up in class having already studied the material to be discussed and
prepared with questions to ask about points that were unclear.

I'm not sure at what point it got "flipped" around to the current state where
students expect to learn the material in lecture and then study their notes,
but attempting to flip it back seems like a good idea.

------
elviejo
This is a dilemma for me. On one side:

Is it wrong to ask for help?? In the professional world, being able to
communicate and collaborate in finding an answer is more usefuel than doing it
all by your own.

On the other side:

If what you want to do is to develop in your brain the mental models to do
math. then you need to do your homework... is like triying to get in shape,
it's ok to have a personal trainer but he can't lift weights for you.

~~~
missechokit
I think the issue here was that it was for a final exam.

~~~
c0nfused
Yeah, let's post the questions to our take home final to the internet. No one
will notice. Honest.

~~~
enjo
I'm not sure what you expect when it's a take _home_ final, however.

~~~
stephencanon
Honesty?

------
nhebb
The prof also busted him on another question:

[http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/256822/product-of-
tw...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/256822/product-of-two-
polynomials-p-and-q-with-rational-coefficients-has-a-integer-
coef#comment562581_256822)

~~~
btilly
That is the only other question that was asked.

------
CJefferson
This kind of thing does cause serious issues evaluating students.

On one hand, students, employers and lecturers all agree (I think) that
allowing students to do larger projects, over a period of time, allows them to
better show their strengths and tackle interesting problems.

On the other hand, without locking people in a room with nothing but a pen for
3 hours or so, it is very difficult to check they aren't getting someone else
to do all their work for them.

~~~
ramidarigaz
I still like to push the idea that my school's CS department uses: grading
appointments. 40% of your grade is the code actually working, 60% is you being
able to explain it to the TA.

~~~
xradionut
If the TA has a grasp of spoken language, that might work. (In the past I've
dropped labs and classes when profs/TAs couldn't communicate clearly.)

------
ef4
This kind of thing is only ever going to get easier, not harder. Overall it's
a good thing that sharing knowledge has become so easy.

So we need to rethink the way we structure education and credentials.

Why is there an incentive to cheat like this? Frankly, because most of the
hoops a student jumps through during their education really don't impart any
lasting measurable value. What fraction of educational content is still usable
in the average student's brain ten years after they learned it? Very little.

Mostly this comes down to the rigid and one-size-fits-all way we teach most
things. Learning is orders of magnitude more effective when the learner has a
personal motivation for why they want to learn something and how they intend
to apply it in their life -- factors that are frequently missing from our
traditional classroom model.

The real value in school is the meta skills. Learning how to learn. Today we
expect students to get those as a side effect of learning a bunch of pointless
(to them personally) stuff, but more often than not they pick up the wrong set
of meta skills: they learn how to cram information just long enough to
regurgitate it for the test and then forget it forever.

If you want people to learn the really valuable meta skills, you need to let
them practice those meta skills in domains the students actually care about.

~~~
bunderbunder
The value is not in getting the answer. The value is in the mental exercise of
figuring out how to get the answer. Supplying your professor with the answer
is merely a token you provide as evidence that you have done so.

As far as whether any "lasting measurable value" is imparted by these sorts of
exercises, I can say that at my workplace I've seen more than one freshout who
clearly hadn't made it through college without significant assistance from
Stack Overflow and other people's blogs. None of them lasted very long.

Perhaps knowing how to solve problems for yourself isn't necessary to get a
college degree nowadays, but it's surprising how useful it can be in a career
where you _solve problems for a living_.

~~~
ef4
I don't disagree at all. I sure as heck did every problem myself and took
pride in it, and I'm sure I'm more capable because of it.

But that's not the point of my post. I'm asking why somebody who clearly
doesn't care about learning this bit of math feels the need to go through the
motions in the first place. It's a suboptimal way to learn anything.

~~~
jeremyjh
Because they are buying a credential.

~~~
ef4
Yes, but the credential is supposedly tied to actual abilities that matter.

If they use their fraudulent credential to get a job and then perform well,
then the material really was pointless and the system really is a big show
without substance. I can hardly fault someone for gaming such a system.

On the other hand, if they fail miserably because they lack relevant skills,
then they didn't really prosper from their cheating.

------
niyazpk
Is there any way to be absolutely certain that "John Paul" is really John
Paul?

Otherwise this does not mean anything more than _"somebody better be
confessing, but I am not sure who"._

(The fact that there was a an attempt on the question does not bode well for
this guy, but again, that could be faked too... right?)

~~~
sosuke
How about signing up under someone else's name and asking questions.

~~~
bentcorner
I couldn't understand someone who did that. If you're posting under an alias
it's because you're worried that you might get caught. You're also assuming
that the person you're posing as is going to be blamed. At this point - what
would you expect happen? The accused is going to plead innocence. If it was a
serious enough matter IP logs and maybe other forensics are going to get
pulled out. Are you smart enough to evade all that too? If you get caught, the
punishment is going to be even worse.

At that point, it is probably easier to just study, learn the material and do
it yourself.

I just cannot fathom how people could be truly pulling off these sort of
stunts and can sleep soundly at night. At some point if you're an idiot you
have to accept it and either do something different or buckle down and work
harder.

~~~
w1ntermute
You clearly don't know how cutthroat some of these universities are. There are
students that will do _anything_ to be number one.

------
darrenkopp
The best part is that the student edited the question and replaced it with a
bunch of garbage characters, and then an admin rolled back the edit, ~2 hours
before the professor's comment.

------
jeremyjh
Its a trap. A written confession may result in serious consequences; without
that, prof can't prove John is John...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Maybe not beyond reasonable doubt but if the student wants to push the point
then a University board is likely only to need to demonstrate that the
questioner is a particular student on the balance of probabilities (in order
to avoid falling foul of a later legal challenge).

There may well be data held on the Uni computer network, for example that
would help to prove who the culprit is to a high enough degree too - eg an
account ID matched with IP of math.stackexchange.com around the time the
question was asked.

~~~
jeremyjh
That would not be possible unless all HTTP is forced through a proxy server,
which is very unlikely in a Uni network. I worked in a University NOC and I
can tell you that this is not going to happen even if they do have the logs;
unless an actual crime was involved or its somehow going to mean negative PR
you aren't going to get cooperation from them on something like this.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I would've expected a basic "domains accessed + timestamp" log on a per login
basis would be reasonably standard to guard against abuse of computer
facilities.

Would grep-ing a classes logs for the timestamps of accesses to
"math.stackexchange.com" be too great an infringement to guard against
fraudulent activity.

It's probably only tortuous but still fraud in the process of obtaining a
degree is a pretty serious offense in Uni terms.

------
firefoxman1
Teachers in my High School caught students doing this several times. The
teacher would go on the _Answers sites the night of an assignment and_
incorrectly* answer a question to catch the students cheating. Pretty clever
on the teachers' part.

~~~
w1ntermute
But also rather immoral, since they were abusing the site. What if someone
else came along later and thought those answers were real?

~~~
tedunangst
Then that someone learns a valuable lesson about the internet.

~~~
w1ntermute
That's no justification to sabotage a math Q&A site, _especially_ if you're a
teacher. Those teachers should feel ashamed of themselves.

~~~
tossacct
Please explain. Note, this is not a comment about the teacher. Nowhere in my
comment do I reference the teacher.

>>>That's no justification to sabotage a math Q&A site.

I assume you mean: [learning a valuable lesson about the internet is] no
justification to [knowingly post an incorrect answer to] a math Q&A site.

I disagree, and I think that the justification the OP mentioned is an
excellent one, for one very specific type of sabotage (posting an incorrect
answer). I will try to paraphrase their justification:

Someone who reads an answer on a math Q&A site and does not check to make sure
the answer is _correct_ will learn "a valuable lesson about the internet" if
the answer turns out to be _incorrect_.

I assume that the lesson could be that "thinking that an idea is true doesn't
make that idea true true". A more specific lesson about math could be "check
your work". In my mind, these lessons are both valid justifications for the
one specific type of sabotage mentioned. Some people believe that checking
your work strengthens your math skills, so the people who checked to see if
the answer was correct or incorrect may have improved their math skills as
well.

------
bmohlenhoff
I'm skeptical anything will come from this. It's not like a Stack Exchange
username is legitimate proof of identity. The professor called out the student
for cheating but unless the guy actually turns in the form along with the
exam, there's probably no way to legitimately link the student's identity with
the stack exchange identity, unless the guy was stupid enough to sign up with
his actual name.

That being said, this would be an effective way to screw over someone else, if
you signed up with their name and plastered these types of questions all over
the internet. The first thing that any HR rep is going to do when considering
a job application is searching for the persons name. If this type of garbage
comes up, that resume will probably be instantly tossed into the bit bucket.

------
davorak
I got to see the editor powers in action as the professors comment was deleted
after a reload. The edit makes sense, anyone can post under any name and bad
news travels faster then good and can be stickier so reputations can be
damaged incorrectly.

------
clarky07
I'll never understand why professors give take home exams and expect that the
internet won't be used to help answer the questions. Even if he didn't just
post the question without trying, who's to say a similar question isn't
already there?

Do History professors do this? I mean a math problem is something you might be
unlikely to find on the internet, but I'm guessing wikipedia knows when the
battle of Gettysburg took place.

If you are allowing for "open book" but not "open internet" give the test in
class and set their book on the table.

------
astrobe_
This story and discussion is the perfect example of how wrong people are when
thinking about schools and what's going on in there.

A teacher provides two services: teaching (obviously) and evaluate students to
let them know how well they are prepared to pass an official exam.

So cheating or not cheating here is a non-issue except for the student that
clearly doesn't know what he's doing. And the the teacher who seems enjoys
playing the sheriff's role could be ridiculous, except he doesn't know what he
is doing either.

That's a pretty sad story, actually.

------
mcg1969
So his username on the Math site is John Paul, but if you click over to his
Stack Exchange network profile, it says his name is Stephen Hilger. Definitely
some shenanigans here.

------
mediumdeviation
It's nothing new - the same has been going on on Stack Overflow and other
forums for ages. Here's a particularly egregious example of someone cheating
on a Regional Olympiad level competition:
<http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/155319/150097>

------
antman
Just now, the professors answer disappeared in front of my eyes after a page
refresh. For those seeing this after me, apparently his professor was watching
the thread and told him he show he is cheating and send a copy of the url
and/or his post history to discuss his penalty.

------
vermontdevil
The professor (under a false name) should post an answer in a specific way and
then see if any students submitted the exam with the copied answer.

But in honesty what did the professor expect from students who are given take
home exams? That they won't go online and look for answers?

~~~
stephencanon
Yes?

Are you saying that you _would_ go online and look for answers? If so, why do
you believe that's an acceptable way to conduct yourself? If not, why do you
believe that the professors students are any different?

------
missechokit
So was this a CMU student? :(

------
sosuke
Don't use your real credentials when asking for help on school work.

I don't think this student was asking for help so much as asking someone to do
the work for him, but I'll keep it in mind either way.

------
styluss
This also happened with a Portuguese 2nd year CS student, no one was sure if
it really was the teacher.

------
DanBC
Is there anything to say that the professor actually is the professor? It's a
new account.

~~~
crusso
Not sure why you were downvoted. I was wondering the same thing. It could just
have been another student or friend busting his chops.

------
tommaxwell
OP had it coming. Why would you use your real identity in this situation? What
a n00b.

------
samdunne
Member for: today

Hmmmmmmmmm

------
joezhou
wooh wooh wooh, so whos real and whos not here?

------
Torn
Is this hacker news?

------
raxen
ouch.

------
basseq
Yowch.

------
gambiting
I think this is wrong. The professor does not understand how the world spins
around nowadays. He caught that guy,but there is no guarantee nobody else was
cheating. Personally,as a non-English student attending a university in the UK
I could easily ask questions in a language the professor could not understand,
on forums he doesn't know exist. My point being - if somebody wants to get
away with it,they will - as many people pointed out,it would be enough if he
posted that question under a fake name.

So if the professor cannot guarantee that no-one is cheating,then any marks
obtained for that exam/homework/whatever are completely meaningless.

~~~
illuminate
"The professor does not understand how the world spins around nowadays."

I'd love to hear you explain that to a partner after being caught red-handed.
Of course, many people DO just this after being caught cheating. Blame the
partner, blame "the system", blame everything but themselves. It's immature
and destructive.

~~~
gambiting
You misunderstood me. I am looking at it from the opposite perspective - as an
honest student, I would protest against a test that can be so easily cheated
on.

~~~
illuminate
My mistake, then. I agree.

No one enjoys having cheaters around them, bringing them down, don't you think
that the professors would rather have cheat-proof exams to offer their classes
as well?

