Teachers Beware: Instructions on How To Cheat and Never get caught

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Haha, I'm sure five lines of text is really gonna help on an english test.

What a sorry-ass crib note. It includes

The antiderivative of b^x
Some incoherent quadratic form stuff
The area of a trapezoid
An example of the perimeter of a rectangle (not the formula)
An incomplete formula for the norm of a partition
An incomplete formula for the antiderivative of arctangent

Of course, this is supposed to be just a placeholder. In the event of actual cheating, the cheater is supposed to write up good stuff. But anyone whose exam performance could be helped by a note with such low information density must be a real loser. As FutureMD said: five lines?

It would be easier to memorize it.

I'll hold out for the brain implant.

By Virgil Samms (not verified) on 08 Aug 2008 #permalink

The best way to deal with that kind of cheating is to write tests that require something other than memorization. (Open book tests, tests in which all the students are allowed to write anything on a notecard/sheet of paper, tests based around higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy...)

Matt Springer: We gave our Physics 208 students two pages worth of fine-print formula sheet

would have killed for cheat sheets -- I don't memorize facts worth a damn - but I remember relationships and semantics much better (I can recall from memory lots of methods and algorithms, but no standard integrals or derivatives - despite LOTS of math in college)

hmmm. Maybe I should have studied in the US?

It's dates I have a problem with. It seems like such a pitiful and wasteful use of our precious small integers.

If one of my students did that, I would bust them to the fullest extent of the Honor Court. The whole time I would be laughing that if they really needed to write out five meager lines of equations, they were already beyond help. You really want to ruin your record over such junk?

By Mr. Upright (not verified) on 08 Aug 2008 #permalink

Holy smokes guys, it appears to me to be a demonstration of the clever use of a pen. Anyone with half-a-brain would see the short comings.

But then, those that need to cheat aren't likely blessed with even a half of a brain. :)

My dad taught me an important trick for cheating on tests. First, make a page or two of extremely condensed crib notes. Work on the wording and arrangement so it logically displays cogent reminders of everything you need to know for the test. Then, burn the crib notes. After all that work, you don't need them anymore.

Hell, it's been 30 years since I took ancient Greek and I can still stumble through a rough translation.

K-12 teacher here.

I agree with Kim.

I have the same philosophy for my tests for my students. Use whatever you want. I've never had a job where I couldn't look up information I needed. What I care about is your ability to do something with that info.

On a related note I don't worry about any kind of cheating because I also figure it's probably not a good test if they can just copy the answers from a friend.

Frankly, if I give them something they can just copy then they should probably just copy it. Since I clearly didn't put any effort into creating a good test, they shouldn't need to put in any effort in answering it.

I agree. let me have access to the information. I just struggled with math and chem, and wonder when in my life will i ever be cornered in a dark alley and be made to calculate without the help of my laminated little cheat sheet.

I have trouble remembering the sheer volume of equations, and with those references, I start out using them often, but as time goes on, less and less.

It seems sort of silly, i'd rather demonstrate use of the information at hand over blind rote memorization and spitting it back out for an exam.