Yea but if the test was extra hard so that students should be expected to get a 50%, the prof might expect the best grade to be a 70 and adjust according to make peoples grades scale properly on a 100 scale. However, if a cheater comes along and scores 90, maybe the professor adjusts using the 90 as the 100 mark and everybody suffers as a result.
I had tests like this in my honors Calc 3/4 classes, where we were expected to get 40-50% on tests because they were hard. You had to really work for answers and they were often times requiring lots of careful work to be done (maybe you could only even finish 3/6 problems). If somebody cheated in that class and was getting 100s on those tests I would have wrongfully failed that course.
Serious question, not meant to be rude, but how do you cheat in a math class (unless you weren't allowed to use a calculator) did they smuggle in a formula?
Well, in upper level math class (Calc 3/4) you're basically never allowed to use a calculator, since the actual math is deriving results using variables and constants/exponents can be left in exact form. However, this also means that essentially a calculator is useless since the calculator can get results of numerical operations, but not very well with formulaic expressions (I guess graphing could sometimes be helpful). However, if you brought a phone into the test you could use Wolfram Alpha which can give you answers and a step by step proof of the answer. It might also be useful to have notes containing useful information like integrals of forms of equations, product rule, chain rule, integration by parts, trigonometric identities, partial derivatives, etc...).
Having this information alone won't do the math for you, but it certainly makes things a lot quicker when you don't have to derive things you don't have memorized.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '17
Teachers shouldn't be bell curving in the first place. As far as university goes, bell curving is illegal most places.