# Trick school assignments **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 16, 2012, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998 "2012-03-16T20:13:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/21 "2012-03-16T23:41:11Z")
Maybe they should’ve asked to have the Ws removed also. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/22 "2012-03-16T23:52:29Z")
Here is a trick answer that a good friend of mine used on a final exam (from the professor who became his PhD thesis supervisor). Question on test: Make up a final exam question for this course and answer it. Solution: Make up a final exam question for this course and answer it. Solution to made up question: Make up a final exam question for this course and answer it. He got an A. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/23 "2012-03-17T01:09:02Z")
The best teacher trick I ever heard of was to fill out a Scantron sheet with all wrong answers, label it “KEY”, and leave it out where sneaky students can find it before a test. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/24 "2012-03-17T02:40:45Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > The second one sounds like the problem of the fly and the cars (two cars start 100km apart and drive in a straight line towards each other; one goes 60 km/hr, and the other 40. A fly moving at 100 km/hr starts on the front of one car, flies to the front of the other car, immediately turns around, flies to the front of the first car, turns around, and repeats this until the cars run into each other, crushing the fly in the process; how far did the fly travel?) > > The “long way” involves summing series; the “quick answer” is, the cars were moving toward each other at a speed of 100 km/hr, so it took one hour for them to meet; the fly traveled for 1 hour at 100 km/hr, which is 100 km.) Uh, I think that spoilered answer is wrong: If the cars are 100km apart and both are moving at 100km/hr toward each other, won’t they meet in \*half \*an hour, since they’ll each cover half the distance? ---
**Author:** ![Chipacabra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@Chipacabra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chipacabra)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/25 "2012-03-17T03:38:32Z")
Double check how fast the cars are moving. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/26 "2012-03-17T04:09:05Z")
My mom teaches sixth grade, and does the “Just write your name on the top” quiz with her students the first day. Not only does it break the ice, but it lets her students know that she’s got something of a sense of humor, but they’d better be on their toes! In high school health class, we had a whole unit on Alcohol Use and Abuse (emphasis on abuse, of course.) As the test was passed out, we were elated to see that it was a True/False test. The easiest kind of test! Woo-hoo! Questions 1-10 were all true. Weird. Questions 11-20 were all true, too. WTF? Questions 21-30… At this point, we’d all broken a sweat. We were surreptitiously glancing at each other, uncertain of what to do here. Should we tell the teacher there was something wrong with the test? \*Was \*there something wrong with the test? Was it me? Was I doing it wrong? Should I change a couple to false, just 'cause? After she collected them, she told us the answer to every single question was indeed, “True.” She’d given us that kind of test so we could see how we did under the pressure of self-doubt. Like, if someone offered us a beer at a party, could we remember the evils of alcohol and say no, even when we started to doubt our answer? ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/27 "2012-03-17T04:22:12Z")
This didn’t happen to me, but it did happen to someone in my class. Years ago, when I was in the Navy, I was in Basic Electricity and Electronics School. We had these [trainers](http://www.nida.com/Products/Hardware/trainers.html) that had switches that simulated various faults in various kinds of circuits. Depending on how the switches were flipped, one or more components in the circuit would be either open or shorted, and we could then troubleshoot them with standard testing equipment. With me so far? Our class leader was a real cocky asshole. He knew everything and didn’t need to be taught anything. In addition to being annoying as hell, it’s a dangerous attitude because electronic equipment on Navy vessels is a) extremely critical; b) extremely expensive; and c) electric shocks tend to be fatal. One day before a lab exam, the instructor went around the room and set everyone’s trainers up with the appropriate faults. He didn’t flip any switches on the class leader’s trainer, he just unplugged the thing from the wall. The rest of the class finished the exam in about 30 minutes, which was the norm for one of these exams. An hour later, the class leader was still trying to figure his out. At that point, the instructor reached down under the bench and pulled out the power cord to show that the trainer had just been unplugged, that there were no faults in any of the circuits. The asshole’s jaw dropped and the rest of us had to muffle our snickering. The instructor explained that you should always look for the most basic faults first, before you make yourself crazy looking for something that may not be there; and that there is a big difference between being confident that you know what you’re doing and being a know-it-all. (This first lesson has served me well. It’s why I always check to make sure the damn device is plugged in before I do anything else.) It turned out that the asshole wasn’t a genius, after all. He had just memorized the various switches so that he knew which switches caused which faults. The instructor was wise to this, hence the need to teach the SOB a lesson before he got to the fleet and killed someone or himself. Not that that was necessary; the asshole finished the course but wasn’t allowed to continue his training for various reasons, some of them not entirely due to his intellectual capability. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/28 "2012-03-17T04:44:38Z")
Bootcamp. The senior NCO asks the whole platoon for volunteers for nightwatch duty. This is when you’re awaken in the middle of the night to walk around for an hour and then have to get up at 5AM. Everyone who didn’t volunteer got nightwatch duty, everyone who volunteered got a good night’s sleep. I, of course, selflessly volunteered and so got to sleep. Not like I saw it coming and volunteered so I wouldn’t have to do it. No sir, I’m not that clever sir. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/29 "2012-03-17T04:56:24Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If the M&M’s weren’t there, they knew the local crew had set things up without the manual and they’d cancel the show. Cancel the show? Not a chance. ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/30 "2012-03-17T05:06:29Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > … > I also recall reading years ago of a possibly apocryphal story of an undergraduate laboratory science (chem?) professor whose first lab assignment consisted of using rulers to repeatedly measure mundane objects and recording to what extent repeatedly measuring an object with a ruler changes the readout. The students did the assignment and the professor gave everyone a failing grade, explaining that the rulers that the class had been issued were inaccurate, and that made the results invalid or useless, the point apparently being that you need to check your equipment (most students assuming that if the instructor gives you laboratory equipment to use for a class assignment, then it must be good enough for that use). Perhaps not exactly what you had in mind, but it is not uncommon in manufacturing to test prospective quality control inspectors as part of the pre-employment process. The tests can be detailed, such as giving an applicant a part and ask to have it inspected per a supplied print. The part may have numerous imperfections (like a obvious crack, or plating missing of half the part), but the print has no notations on coating coverage or acceptability of cracks. What is often done, however, is to have the supplied micrometers intentionally mis-calibrated by .005" and the part undersized by the same amount, so if the applicant does not check the zero-point on the micrometer out before he starts, he will not pick-up that the part is undersize, but because he finds the crack (or other imperfection not addressed by the print), he thinks he passed. This weeds out a lot. No, I’m not an inspector, nor do I hire them. I do have colleagues that do, though. excavating (for a mind) ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/31 "2012-03-17T05:41:58Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Except the teacher didn’t say to follow the instructions out of order-she just said to read them first. Even if the last instruction says to ignore the other instructions, it is still the last instruction to be followed, creating a paradox. The one I had started out (1) Write your name at the top left of the first page (2) Read all the questions before answering any of them (3) [here the silly stuff started–actually it didn’t get really silly until maybe question 11 when the instruction was to jump up out of your seat, turn around, then sit down again, or something like that and (4…on to the very last one which said something like, (20) **Now that you have read all the questions, go back and follow only questions (1) and (2).** Now, I wasn’t following the directions, but I am a very fast reader and it was also my habit to skim through the questions before answering any of them anyway. So when I got to the last one I gave a sigh of relief, erased my name from the right hand side of the page and wrote it on the left, and then sat back to watch my classmates shout out their names, jump out of their seats and twirl around, etc. And a lot of them did. We were not graded on this. If somebody was graded on it, I think we would have seen that as pretty unfair. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/32 "2012-03-17T06:01:08Z")
I was given the test mentioned in the OP in 8th grade Spanish class. She also gave us a test where the directions said to read the entire test before answering, then at the bottom ther was a final instruction to answer only the even numbered questions. The same [del]bitch[/del] teacher gave us a test with nonsense questions, like, “If a plane crashes on the US/Canadian border, where are the survivors buried?” How is it I got an A in spanish and couldn’t speak a word? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_C](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Captain\_C](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_C)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/33 "2012-03-17T06:29:30Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > The one I had started out (1) Write your name at the top left of the first page (2) Read all the questions before answering any of them (3) [here the silly stuff started–actually it didn’t get really silly until maybe question 11 when the instruction was to jump up out of your seat, turn around, then sit down again, or something like that and (4…on to the very last one which said something like, (20) **Now that you have read all the questions, go back and follow only questions (1) and (2).** > > Now, I wasn’t following the directions, but I am a very fast reader and it was also my habit to skim through the questions before answering any of them anyway. So when I got to the last one I gave a sigh of relief, erased my name from the right hand side of the page and wrote it on the left, and then sat back to watch my classmates shout out their names, jump out of their seats and twirl around, etc. And a lot of them did. > > We were not graded on this. If somebody was graded on it, I think we would have seen that as pretty unfair. But see, that is still incorrect. It doesn’t say to follow question 20, just to read it. I mean, if you are going to just arbitrarily follow question 20, why not question 19? Have you never written a basic computer program? Same premise. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/34 "2012-03-17T06:50:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If the M&M’s weren’t there, they knew the local crew had set things up without the manual and they’d cancel the show. > [@hajario](#): > > Cancel the show? Not a chance. According to the [Snopes article](http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp), if they found brown M&Ms backstage they would ‘line-check the whole production’, which I assume means check everything over. It didn’t cause an automatic cancellation of the show, but it sounds like the show \*could \*be cancelled if the set-up looked bad enough. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/35 "2012-03-17T06:57:05Z")
As for the OP, I remember getting one of those tests once, probably in the 6th or 7th grade. Our teacher was always telling us to read a test over before starting any questions, so she gave us that test to trip us up. I thought it was dumb back then and I still do now - nothing like encouraging your students to embarrass themselves (there were lots of instructions like ‘jump on one foot’ and ‘make a noise like a barn animal’) so that they learn not to trust you. Not to mention the fact that throughout high school and university I never followed that rule anyways and it never had any ill effects. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/36 "2012-03-17T07:05:26Z")
I’ve had that “Follow-the-Rules” test three times: 10th grade in Hawaii, and during a private pilot ground school class, and during a college class. You never see it exactly the same way twice, there are any number of urban-legend-style variations out there. It’s AT LEAST 40 years old. Because the test varies so much, you may get wording variations that either do or don’t have that read-versus-do paradox. But I never heard anyone debate that point IRL. Only one of the three teachers threatened to really count our grade on it, and even she didn’t do that. It was always used either just for fun and/or to lead in some kind of class discussion or lecture on following the instructions. Of course, you all know that equally popular story about the thermodynamics professor who asked on the final exam: [Is Hell exothermic or endothermic](http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/hell.asp) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/37 "2012-03-17T07:12:25Z")
Never mind the stupid “trick” problems that they do on purpose. Creating a fair test that actually tests what it’s supposed to test is hard enough. It’s an art and a science. I think there are actual units of study for teachers to learn how to do it. Here’s my pet peeve: Multiple choice tests, that begin with the instruction “For each question, choose the best answer.” That means there might be NO perfectly correct answer to some question, but one that is more nearly correct than all the others. Arrrrrgh! Wait! It gets worse! Some teachers include multiple choice questions where one choice is the infamous: D. None of the above. Now what happens if no answers are correct, but all answers have some piece of correctness to them, and one answer if reasonably close to being correct, and one of the choices is: D. None of the above. :smack: Are you supposed to choose the nearly-correct answer (because the instructions said pick the most nearly correct answer)? Or do you choose D. None of the above, because none of the other answers are exactly correct? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/38 "2012-03-17T07:54:53Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Now what happens if no answers are correct, but all answers have some piece of correctness to them, and one answer if reasonably close to being correct, and one of the choices is: > D. None of the above. > :smack: > Are you supposed to choose the nearly-correct answer (because the instructions said pick the most nearly correct answer)? Or do you choose D. None of the above, because none of the other answers are exactly correct? I’d say you should use your judgement as to whether one of the other answers is closer to being correct than no answer at all. For example, if the question was “Who was President of the United States during World War II?” and the choices were: A. Woodrow Wilson B. Franklin Delano Roosevelt C. Ronald Reagan D. none of the above Now you could think that Roosevelt died in 1945 before the war ended, so he wasn’t President during the entire war. So the correct answer might be something like “95% Roosevelt and 5% Truman”. So looking over the available answers, you could think that A and C are zero percent correct, B is 95% correct, and D is 5% correct. In that case, you should choose B as the most correct answer. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/39 "2012-03-17T13:11:34Z")
> [@Meyer6](#): > > According to the [Snopes article](http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp), if they found brown M&Ms backstage they would ‘line-check the whole production’, which I assume means check everything over. It didn’t cause an automatic cancellation of the show, but it sounds like the show \*could \*be cancelled if the set-up looked bad enough. A lot of things could have happened. They could have shaved their hair and sang Sinatra a capella. They never cancelled a show over this though. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998/40 "2012-03-17T13:15:43Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I’ve had that “Follow-the-Rules” test three times: 10th grade in Hawaii, and during a private pilot ground school class, and during a college class. You never see it exactly the same way twice, there are any number of urban-legend-style variations out there. It’s AT LEAST 40 years old. I saw it in grade school in 1974. I thought it was idiotic then. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trick-school-assignments/615998.md?page=3)