This is already done by certain tests like the AMC and the old SAT.
Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
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Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#12I had several CS courses where writing something to the effect of "I don't quite know the answer this question (or don't have time to solve it), but the formulas / algorithms / bits of info I think are relevant are: x, y, z." On a difficult question this might get half credit.
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#13This is a great idea! I think there should definitely be more emphasis placed on knowing what you don't know in a good education system. Even something like knowing what areas of study exist can be quite valuable. I had a friend acting as a research assistant to a biology masters student who was tasked with removing duplicates from an Excel file. The masters student said it would take about four hours because that's…
I had a similar situation, where a colleague's research assistant estimated it would take her 300 hours to process some data. 15 mins of python later and I landed coauthorship on their paper!
I've run into similar situations where people contributed < an hour of expertise that ended up saving weeks of frustration. (and I've probably squandered a lot of time too.. )
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#14I've seen it implemented in one regional mathematic competition. It was a multiple-choice test, where leaving an answer blank netted you 3 points, while answering wrong gave you 0 points.
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#15As an electronic engineering student, our exams were negatively marked. If you got an answer wrong you incurred (-0.25 * $availablePoints). If you didn't answer the question you scored 0. We despised this at the time..
Now a medical student, we don't have negative marking. I feel it's actually very important in this discipline to know your limitations and not pass-off as though you know more than you do. I have however encountered resistance to this, having professors question my very reasons for doing medicine due to leaving questions unanswered..!
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#16If you're interested in the topic of making students divulge what their confidence in their answer is, you might also like this classic post by Terence Tao. [0] It explores how you might handle and grade a true/false test where for each question the student has to fill in their best estimate of the probability they got the question right.
[0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/how-to-assign-part...
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#17This is a great idea! I think there should definitely be more emphasis placed on knowing what you don't know in a good education system. Even something like knowing what areas of study exist can be quite valuable. I had a friend acting as a research assistant to a biology masters student who was tasked with removing duplicates from an Excel file. The masters student said it would take about four hours because that's…
This reminds me of a claim made by a former spy on a cable comedy news show that Wikileaks must be run by an intelligence agency because their cable and email dumps in reaction to news events would have required 300 analysts working 24 hours in shifts. But in reality, a bit of 30-40 year old technology like grep, used by a handful of people, could accomplish the same thing.
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#18There was a Decision Analysis class at Stanford that took this idea to an extreme. For each multiple choice option, you had to indicate the percentage confidence of that option being correct. The percentages for all 4 options had to add up to 100%. The score you got for each question = 1 + ln(confidence-assigned-for-correct-answer).
So if you were completely sure and gave the correct answer 100%, you would get a score of 1. If you gave it 90%, you would get a slightly lower score. If you "guessed wrong" and gave the correct answer 0% probability, ln0 is negative infinity, so you would instantly fail the entire assignment. It was a pain, but it really made you reassess how well you know stuff, rewarded people who truly knew their stuff, and burnt anyone whose confidence exceeded their actual abilities.
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#19My favorite thing about this is something I heard from Dr Bender, Stony Brook CS: if you get <20%, there's no way to argue you should have passed when you failed, because a student who didn't take the class would do better
Re: Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know
#20Somewhat related, during my studies I got into some monumental arguments over the "using your answer from the previous question" rubbish.
Let's say I had no idea how to do question #10, but needed something to start with for #11. I would answer #10, and come up with an answer that made #11 as easy as possible. (I don't remember, something like x^2 instead of some integral junk).
Then I would complete #11 using x^2 as input.
Genius, I still think. My professors, not so much.