Testing Creativity
Category: Just Plain Silly...
Posted Friday, March 02, 2007 at 08:27 AM [GMT-6]

Did you ever have a class in school where the subject matter was as incomprehensible as an interview with Paula Abdul? I can vaguely remember sitting in organic chemistry and calculus classes in college, staring at exam papers where the questions might as well have been written in Sanskrit, and seeing visions of an already anemic GPA shrinking into the nanosphere. I remember seeking inspiration in the faded ceiling tiles, and had I not been so self-absorbed, I might have taken some comfort in the fact that I surely was not the only sophomore in history to have put himself in such a position through a single-minded pursuit of strictly non-academic endeavors.

At some point, I would realize that I had to put something down on paper, in response to the ridiculous questions. *sigh* If only I'd been as creative as this.

Tip of the dunce's cap to Isaac Schrödinger

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Comments

The "Find x " one just kills me.

Posted by: Jim at March 2, 2007 09:45 AM

Isaac is right. Some of them are absolutely tear-inducingly funny.

And I agree with Jim -- that was the first thing I saw and started roaring. The" elephant in the way" was funny, too, especially seeing the grader's initial attempt to play it straight.

Posted by: Bret at March 2, 2007 11:33 AM

Meant to add on the topic, there was a story, probably apocryphal, about a problem on a physics test that went something like, "Given a barometer, find the height of the building under the following conditions..."

The desired approach was to use ambient air pressure differential in some fashion to determine the altitude at the top.

One student, however, had a different approach -- or rather, approaches:

There are two ways to solve this problem:

1) Go up to the landlord of the building and say, "If you'll tell me how tall your building is, I'll give you this nice barometer."

2) Go to the top of the building, and with a stopwatch, time how long it takes for the barometer to smash into pieces after you throw it over the side.

Posted by: Bret at March 2, 2007 11:39 AM

That barometer one is great. And, were I the teacher, and had the student provided the necessary equation for answer #2, it would have gotten full credit.

...I like the elephant one, too...

Posted by: Brian at March 2, 2007 05:13 PM

Bret, I guess you eventually lose your sense of humor if you're in academia long enough, but I think I'd have a hard time not rewarding that kind of creativity and sheer chutzpah.

There are some critical thinking skills being applied in some of those solutions, as well, even if they're not necessarily relevant to the question being asked.

Posted by: Eric at March 2, 2007 08:13 PM

Someone recently e-mailed these and a couple more to me. I howled out loud about the one with the elephant.

Posted by: Foo at March 3, 2007 03:46 PM
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