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Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

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Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#31

Post by noosphr »

altairprime wrote: post #16
xqcgrek2 wrote: post #3

How do blue book exams translate to real world problems the students will encounter? Why not open book + AI use exams, because that's what students will have in their careers?

Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. Faking intelligence with AI only works in an online-exclusive modality, and there’s a lot of real world circumstances where being able to speak, reason, and interpret on the fly without resorting to a handheld teleprompter is necessary if you want to be viewed positively. I think a lot of people are going to be enraged when they discover that de…

>Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting.

I get the same "you won't always have a calculator with you" vibes from 90s teachers chiding you to show your work when I hear people say stuff like this.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#32

Post by cyberax »

altairprime wrote: post #16
xqcgrek2 wrote: post #3

How do blue book exams translate to real world problems the students will encounter? Why not open book + AI use exams, because that's what students will have in their careers?

Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. Faking intelligence with AI only works in an online-exclusive modality, and there’s a lot of real world circumstances where being able to speak, reason, and interpret on the fly without resorting to a handheld teleprompter is necessary if you want to be viewed positively. I think a lot of people are going to be enraged when they discover that de…

> Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting.

Challenge accepted. One possible solution: https://github.com/RonSijm/ButtFish

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#33

Post by altairprime »

noosphr wrote: post #31
altairprime wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. Faking intelligence with AI only works in an online-exclusive modality, and there’s a lot of real world circumstances where being able to speak, reason, and interpret on the fly without resorting to a handheld teleprompter is necessary if you want to be viewed positively. I think a lot of people are going to be enraged when they discover that de…

>Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. I get the same "you won't always have a calculator with you" vibes from 90s teachers chiding you to show your work when I hear people say stuff like this.

I wouldn’t equate trigonometry, which underpins the classic parabolic example you’re referring to, with critical reasoning in human conversation. One is situationally useful at best; the other is mandatory to prevent exploitation by malicious people. Mental quadratics may be appealing, but the ability to reason is the bare minimum. Besides: if you’re using a calculator or AI in a board meeting, you’re likely unprepared for the board meeting.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#34

Post by CompoundEyes »

There are schemes happening in interviews too. I've been doing many technical interviews for a senior role with off shore candidates lately. They come to me after passing a challenging online test that has controls to check for browser focus lost, opening new tabs etc. I think it may require a camera to be on too. Even with that more than half of the candidates can't code.

Our interview usually starts with them breathlessly reading from a script out of the corner of their eye. I'm ok with notes to make sure you hit some high points about yourself even in person. Nervousness shouldn't disqualify a talented person. But with the coding part I've gotten exasperated and started asking these senior candidates to share their screen and do a fizz buzz exercise live in a text editor in the first few minutes. If they struggle I politely end the interview on the 15.

One candidate cheated and it was interesting to watch. In the time I sent the message in Zoom and them sharing their screen, just a few seconds, they had either queried or LLM-ed it on their phone or another computer, had someone off screen or in the same room listening and sharing the answer on another monitor or something else. Whatever it was they turned their head slightly to the side, squinted a bit and typed the answer in Java. A few syncopated characters at a time. When asked what modulo was they didn't know and couldn't make any changes to it. It was wacky. In retrospect I think it was them reading the question out loud to an LLM.

I'm waiting for the candidate who has someone behind them with the same shirt on pretending to be their arms.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#35

Post by bigstrat2003 »

noosphr wrote: post #31
altairprime wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. Faking intelligence with AI only works in an online-exclusive modality, and there’s a lot of real world circumstances where being able to speak, reason, and interpret on the fly without resorting to a handheld teleprompter is necessary if you want to be viewed positively. I think a lot of people are going to be enraged when they discover that de…

>Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. I get the same "you won't always have a calculator with you" vibes from 90s teachers chiding you to show your work when I hear people say stuff like this.

You say that like those teachers were incorrect. They were correct, and still are correct. You don't always have a computer to hand, and you do in fact need to be able to do basic math.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#36

Post by Syzygies »

One can't have an informed opinion on this without witnessing how grading a college exam takes place, first hand.

Grading a stack of blue books is a "just kill me now" brutal experience. A majority of cognitive effort is just finding the page for the next problem to grade, with finding the answer another delay; any programming language with this kind of access latency would stay a "one bus" language. So of course professors rely on disinterested grad students to help grade. They'll make one pass through the stack, getting the hang of the problem and refining the point system about twenty blue books in, but never going back.

With stapled exams one problem per page one can instead sort into piles for scores 0-6 (if you think your workplace is petty, try to imagine a sincere conversation about whether an answer is worth 14 or 15 points out of 20), and it's easy to review piles.

When I had 200 linear algebra exams to grade at once, I'd scan everything, and use my own software to mark and bin one question at a time, making review passes a pleasure. I could grade a 10 question final in one intense sitting, with far more confidence in the results than team grading ever gave me.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#37

Post by ipcress_file »

wrp wrote: post #30

Survey question: To what extent did blue book exams go away? When I started out (and the original Van Halen was still together), blue book exams were the norm in humanities classes. I've had narrow experience with American undergrad classes the past 25 years, so I don't have a feeling for how things have evolved.

I've never stopped using them, with the exception of the pandemic year, when we were forced to run online exams.

Why replace a system that generally works well with one that introduces additional potential problems?

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#38

Post by noosphr »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #35
noosphr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. I get the same "you won't always have a calculator with you" vibes from 90s teachers chiding you to show your work when I hear people say stuff like this.

You say that like those teachers were incorrect. They were correct, and still are correct. You don't always have a computer to hand, and you do in fact need to be able to do basic math.

If I don't have access to my phone the power grid has been down for at least two days and by that point I've got more pressing issue than showing my work when doing basic math.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#39

Post by ipcress_file »

Syzygies wrote: post #36

One can't have an informed opinion on this without witnessing how grading a college exam takes place, first hand. Grading a stack of blue books is a "just kill me now" brutal experience. A majority of cognitive effort is just finding the page for the next problem to grade, with finding the answer another delay; any programming language with this kind of access latency would stay a "one bus" language. So of course pro…

I think problem number one is that you had 200 exams to grade.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#40

Post by noosphr »

altairprime wrote: post #33
noosphr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting. I get the same "you won't always have a calculator with you" vibes from 90s teachers chiding you to show your work when I hear people say stuff like this.

I wouldn’t equate trigonometry, which underpins the classic parabolic example you’re referring to, with critical reasoning in human conversation. One is situationally useful at best; the other is mandatory to prevent exploitation by malicious people. Mental quadratics may be appealing, but the ability to reason is the bare minimum. Besides: if you’re using a calculator or AI in a board meeting, you’re likely unprepar…

I'm not sure how you did proofs in trigonometry with a calculator.
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