391–400 of 481 posts
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Do you recommend HMOR? I’ve never heard of it, but the Wikipedia page sounded interesting
no it's terrible, see: https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/
1. I bought a 500 year-old book full of engravings that turned out to have pictures of UFOs in it 2. I became obsessed with Luna Park, an influential proto-Disneyland based in Coney Island 100+ years ago. It was so popular they ran light rail out there and hundreds of thousands of people went there every weekend until it burned down about a decade later. Took a book about it on vacation to Paris. Went to a random pla…
Not really related, and a bit of a "woo" book, but there's a book called Latitude 33: Key to the Kingdom by Walter Bosley that suggests SRI designed the original Disney Land in a certain way to harness some sort of "woo" energy on the 33rd parallel. There's a bit in it though (I'm 99% its in this book) that involves some peculiar man appearing out of time and place enjoying the park. I hadn't thought of that book in years but this triggered that.
As a work of non-fiction it is dubious, but it's a fun read as a work of fiction.
Now, wholly unrelated, but also a fun dubious as non-fiction but fun as fiction book: The Vertical Plane by Ken Webster which alleges that for 2 years in the 1980s messages from the 16th century and the future would appear on the author's BBC Micro computer with some interaction.
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no it's terrible, see: https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/
Actually, I agree with lots of the stuff said by the reviewer, but most of them are not such dealbreakers for me as they are for him. At least I read the book as having fun with all the gaps in the wizard world and the personal fantasies of the author are on the back burner.
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He may not have been lazy; he may not believe in the system.
He was probably still believing in the salary he was drawing from the system.
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Its easy to spot the pattern and useful to know what wont be asked.
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).
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 perfect distribution. The supper paranoid used some kind of RNG which also comes in patterns.
One of each type came to ask me how I did it at the end. The last one was funniest. He had one test with a trick question that everyone got wrong. It just didn't have enough C. One of my answers was more likely wrong than right. I had to go over the A,B,D answer candidates a few times. Reduced the list to 3 potential trick questions. Figured out that 2 of them were correct. Don't ask me why but the remaining one must have been C.
He explained how over his [long] career he started out with to few D answers. I name the other teachers still doing that. He then went for the perfect distribution. I name the teachers still doing that. And now he thought he had the perfect formula. How am I suppose to fix this?? He asked. I'm like, I'm not doing your homework but I do foresee a very interesting meeting with the other teachers.
edit: I did study but cheating was just to much fun. When they switched to tests on computers I made a good bit of money as administrator. I swapped some of the answers around so that the wrong answer was right and everyone got poor grades. They would purchase the list of correct answers from me. Then after they aced it I would reduce their grade to something sensible for the student. When they protested I told them that they paid for answers not for grades. Grades are very expensive as -hey- they could potentially ruin this good thing I got going here!
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I took a German literature course in the 90s, the professor used the same quizzes and tests since the early 60s. A buddy of mine had a copy and I took the class for an easy A. The only gotcha is that you had to be physically present and give him advance notice of you were to be out.
This is bringing back bad memories of my Electromagnetic Fields class...
It was 60 questions in 180 seconds. No hard calculations, just stuff you were an embarrassment to the prof if you passed EM and didn’t know.
He gave it right before break (3 hour class). I got a 96 first attempt. Next highest grade was a 30. He said I could leave as the remainder of class was to go over the test. I literally strutted out and said I was going to have a cold beer. Good times.
The inscription reads: "Phil - here's the latest opus - Watts"
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…
This can make a nice movie plot.
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He was probably still believing in the salary he was drawing from the system.
Exams are for you to evaluate your progress, a professor doesn't give a flying duck about your grades, maybe only in the statical sense. You are only lying to yourself.