71–80 of 90 posts
in 6 months 4 points on a random test will be completely forgot.. might as well game the professor that is trying to game you
The professor omitted the sole interesting number: what percentage of students choose 6 points. Is it typically 15% or is it typically 80%? It makes a huge difference. Most likely, it's a percentage low enough to indicate that the 10% threshold is carefully chosen. Otherwise he'd tell us. This is evidence that he has an agenda to promote (that people are too selfish), and that the facts don't support his agenda (most…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article, the class isn't graded on a curve so your assumption that 2 points is worthless doesn't apply.
This assumes you haven't already maxed out the GPA value for the course. If you already have a 92 (I went to a school that didn't have "A+", YMMV), there's no reason to increase your grades, and anyone else increasing their grade has the potential to devalue yours. Note that this is fixed by just averaging your actual grades out of 100 to form your GPA, instead of mapping from a 0-100 range to an enumeration to a 0-4…
I'm surprised no rich student ever just offered ahead of the tally that they'd pay everyone $x if no one choose 6, where x is more valuable than 4 points. He now has the ability to safely choose 6, and everyone else is paid for their cooperation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "points" have no intrinsic value except in comparison to your classmates this would be true if the course was graded on a curve, but the article makes clear that > the course grades are not curved.
Doesn't matter if there's a curve. Your grades are still only meaningful compared to your classmates. (ok, assuming you're not in danger of actually failing the class)
> I’ve been giving it to students since 2008, and only one class has successfully mastered the challenge. That's a real surprise. The 2 points option is the safe one, so everyone should go with that. Sure, I could assume that all (or most) of the other students think so and just get the 6 points myself. But then again, chances are that the other students think the same. So let's just go with the safer 2 points.
No, the safe option is to get organized and plan out who is going to chose the 6 points. That way, you know if you secretly chose the 6 points when you were supposed to get 2, you will get nothing. Then it doesn't become tragedy of commons, but rather an experiment with vandalism. The experiment, IMO, isn't valid. In RL tragedy of commons, the selfish don't really suffer that much .. it's usually everyone else that d…
If you think that's a safe option, you've clearly never dealt with large groups.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This assumes you haven't already maxed out the GPA value for the course. If you already have a 92 (I went to a school that didn't have "A+", YMMV), there's no reason to increase your grades, and anyone else increasing their grade has the potential to devalue yours. Note that this is fixed by just averaging your actual grades out of 100 to form your GPA, instead of mapping from a 0-100 range to an enumeration to a 0-4…
Since this is for extra credit on a term paper that hasn't been graded yet, isn't it a little early to know (for sure) that you maxed your grade?
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Great, except votes are anonymous.
It doesn't matter because the requirement is NO ONE choose it. There is nothing to gain by selecting 6. The second you are writing 6 down on your paper, you better hope the 4 extra points are worth more to you than $x because you have absolutely invalidated the game, not "maybe" invalidated it. If x is big enough to trivialize 4 points, I am pretty sure no one would choose it (or at least fell well below 10%). For ex…