[Ilugc] Re: Open Book
- From: siva@xxxxxxxxxxx (Sivasankar Chander)
- Date: Sun Sep 5 16:26:18 2004
What do you mean by "copying incorrect solution" ? Does that mean
that if 29 out of 30 solved correctly with one being "coppied
incorrectly" will lead to 'F' grade?
Yes, a plagiarized incorrect solution, if found to be identical on
two submitted sheets, would guarantee an F grade for both the submitters.
OTOH, if they had independently arrived at the incorrect solution, no
penalty would apply; and depending on the originality of the approach,
might get partial credit for both.
The problems were all hard, between M40 to M50 level of difficulty [1],
if you use Knuth's terminology. Part of the skill was to avoid wasting
too much time on the M50 (open/unsolved) problems, and to focus on
solving at least 1 or 2 M40 problems. An average student could definitely
have solved at least one in 3 weeks with just a few hours at the
library. And getting just 1 correct would have got a B grade, and 2 would
have got an A grade. One could even submit a blank answer sheet, get
0/30, and hope for a C or D. But given the ingrained cultural mindset in
most of us to take shortcuts to get ahead, many did cheat and were
discovered - netting them a straight F and 3 wasted credits.
[1]. A typical M50 problem of those days might have been to show and
analyze a polynomial-time deterministic primality testing algorithm.
At that time, none existed - so it was definitely an M50 (open) problem.
You could avoid it altogether, or get partial credit by showing an
incomplete (but original) approach to solving the problem. Or you could
get 1 point by spending about 4 years and solving it, like Manindra
Agrawal and his two students Kayal and Saxena did :-). Today, of course,
that problem would only rate an M45.
-Siva
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