Newsgroups: alt.best.of.internet
From: pcalitri@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (pat calitri)
Subject: Scary spelling...
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 18:42:38 GMT


This was originally posted here at the University of Waterloo on our
local newsgroup (uw.general) by an Associate Professor in the CS Dept.
As, funny as I found it (and I find *everything* funny), it is also
a little disturbing:

-- begin incl ------------------------------------------------------

On the CS 134 midterm last term, I placed a question that asked each
student to write a function "occurrences" which counted the number of
occurrences of a key value in a linked list of records. In the course
of marking the midterm, I noticed that some students were spelling
"occurrences" wrong in their answers, even though it was given twice
in the text of the question. (The only place it needed to appear in
the answer was in the header of the function, and that was given in
full in the statement of the question.) I asked the markers to keep
track of the number of misspellings. Out of about 400 papers marked,
there were more than 50 papers that spelled "occurrences" wrong.

I mentioned this to the class while discussing the midterm, and told
them that there would be a question on the final asking for the
correct spelling of "occurrences".  This brought the expected laugh:
such a question would be almost as absurd as the question "When did
the War of 1812 start?" asked in a history test I took in the seventh
grade. 

On the final exam for CS 134, I placed a question that asked the
examinee to write a function "occurrences" which counted the number of
occurrences of a key value in a tree. Part (a) of this question read
"What is the correct spelling of the word `occurrences'?".  Part (b),
which asked for the code for the function, used "occurrences" in its
text in the same fashion as the midterm question.

Out of 364 papers marked, there were 142 wrong answers to part (a).
There were a number of students who spelled "occurrences" differently
in their answers to part (a) and (b), but we did not keep statistics
on this.

Incidentally, there was one wrong answer on that Grade 7 test, out of
a class of 25.
   
-- end incl --------------------------------------------------------

When I emailed this prof to tell him I was reposting this article, I
called the subject of my email "Occuren(c/s)es post" so I could avoid
the above spelling mistake, not realizing that "occurrences" has *2*
R's. As Popeye would say: How embarrasking!  ;-)

========================= Fluffy the Wonder Bunny ============================
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====================== pcalitri@descartes.waterloo.edu =======================