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What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

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Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#421

Post by [deleted] »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #417
ortusdux wrote: post #78

I once took a critical thinking course and bought the textbook 2nd hand from the college bookstore. A week or two in, I noticed half of a sentence written in the margin. As the professor started teaching the topic from that page, he rhetorically asked a question, did not get an answer, and then answered himself with the sentence from the book. I filliped ahead and found that the entire book was annotated with all of…

Reminds me of a geology professor I had in college. She had a fully photographic memory and recited the entire book, word for word, front to back during class without anything at her lectern. As impressive as that was, it's also what made me skip her class except for tests, because what's the point?

[deleted]

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#422

Post by WalterBright »

fezfight wrote: post #258
gtk40 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of over a decade ago I was in a high school AP course. At the start of the course, the teacher recommended we get a AP prep book to study throughout the year, and recommended 2 brands. She specifically said not to get one brand, noting that it was of inferior quality. I had already got the prep book she didn't recommend as I had found it on sale before that remark was made. I later learned that she used th…

Similarly, with a slight twist, a prof I had used to recommend we read the entire text book, not just the chapters required for the class. It was an open book exam so people figured they could annotate the pages or whatever and didn't bother to follow his adcice. He would often say, 'everything [we] ever want to know is in that book!' He was right. The final exam was verbatim the practice exam given at the end of the…

Wouldn't you rather learn the material?

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#423

Post by fezfight »

WalterBright wrote: post #422
fezfight wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, with a slight twist, a prof I had used to recommend we read the entire text book, not just the chapters required for the class. It was an open book exam so people figured they could annotate the pages or whatever and didn't bother to follow his adcice. He would often say, 'everything [we] ever want to know is in that book!' He was right. The final exam was verbatim the practice exam given at the end of the…

Wouldn't you rather learn the material?

Sure. Not a lot of learning going on during exams, I'm afraid.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#424

Post by jjeaff »

6510 wrote: post #396
Beldin wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Errr... many questions can just vary numbers a bit. There's very little value to knowing that the inverse of 3 mod 7 won't be asked this exam - it's trivial to change the numbers and test the same knowledge with a slightly but sufficiently different question. I imagine there's a somewhat similar type of questions for non-CS disciplines (same case description, different key clue, hence different answer).

It's not entirely trivial, it takes work. If you are simply changing the number but ask the inverse of x mod y every time you didn't win the game. 2 out of 3 times changes nothing. I had the most fun with multiple choice tests. I took the average A,B,C and D answers from previous tests. The teacher not paranoid would have a lot of B, slightly less A and C and below average D answers. The paranoid teacher would have p…

Am I understanding this comment correctly that you were administering tests and rigging them to cause people to fail and then charging people money to get the rigged answers for the tests so they could pass?

If so, this is some real unethical and criminal behavior.

But I'm inclined to think it's all made up considering the first part of the comment seems to imply that you were doing well on tests simply by guessing the answers based an A,B,C,D distribution. Which is silly as the best you are going to do with that strategy is maybe get a slight hint for a few of the more difficult questions.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#425

Post by chasd00 »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #363
floren wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At work in the secure area when locking up I found a 10 inside the door. I didn't know what to do with it so I tacked it on the bulletin board by the door. Really obvious. Nobody took it for 2 weeks (which is kind of remarkable), so I took it back to buy lunch. When I've worked in secure areas, I've never had the slightest concern about theft. We even did an experiment where we left a couple $1 bills out on the tab…

There are some places in Asia where you can go to a coffee shop, let your $1000+ laptop on a table, go for a 30 mins walk, come back and nothing happened neither to your laptop or your bag. I actually do it all the time. I'm sure I could be gone all day and nothing would happen but after 40 mins some instinct kicks in and I feel the urge to go back check everything's still there.

Where i live you can get your laptop stolen while typing on it if you sit outside :(

( oak cliff in Dallas )

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#427

Post by cronix »

When I was in grade school in the 70's, I bought a used book with my allowance. It had a pristine $100 bill in it, presumably used for a bookmark. I think I paid $2 for it or something. Needless to say, I had never seen $100 before. I was filthy rich! I still remember the shock and joy.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#429

Post by BizarroLand »

I buy interesting looking books from Thrift stores, and the weirder the better.

I found a copy of a book called, "You are becoming a Galactic Human":

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/you-are-becoming-a-galactic-hu...

Which was weird, but that's not the strangest thing I've ever found IN a book.

That spotlight belongs to a thrifted copy of "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41580312-be-here-now

Which is also a very strange and interesting book, but inside of it, bought from a thrift store, I found a pressed Marijuana leaf, which I still have. I would have thought that they would at least riffle the pages of the books to make sure there was no money or anything in it but somehow this leaf slipped through.

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