Should I argue with my professor on this?

[flyingpig]

I use Google and other textbooks quite liberally. If you don't understand something, you need to find other resources to help. This can be in the form of tutoring, other textbooks, the internet (arguably the most powerful tool on the planet), study-groups, office hours, etc.

No you don't understand, it isn't a tough problem on a homework set. If so, all of us would go find the answer to that question.

Let me try this make this clear, google and other resources are useless because we don't even know what to look for.

It's like I want you to find a word in the dictionary that I have in my head, but first you have to guess that word in my head.

 

[G037H3]

after reading the other responses, I'm inclined to agree with the posters that are saying "suck it up, buttercup."

unless you can provide specifics, i think that the general attitude you'll receive will be something to the effect of "you have to go A and B the C of D!" (above and beyond the call of duty)

NOTE TO FLYINGPIG: can you please change "unpleased" to "displeased" in your OP? it's bothering me, thanks.

 

[Ryker]

You are trying to train physicists.

How does training physicists differ from training hockey players, though? They are both trained with the aim of excelling at the highest level, and both require not just throwing the hardest thing you can at them, but a well thought out approach.

Grades are only a motivation method. Part of the reason that this worked at my undergraduate school was that pretty much everyone in the class was smart and motivated, so in the end pretty much everyone was able to pass the class with a decent grade. The reason that the tests were killer was to get really smart people to work at their limits. In high school, if you were a super-duper genius, and you made 100% on all the tests, that was it...

I agree with a lot of what you said here, but grades are not only a motivation method, unfortunately. They matter, they matter to employers and to grad schools. And even if they were just a motivation method, getting low grades due to the test being just ridiculously hard is more of demotivation than a motivation. Well, I guess it depends on the kind of person you are, as well, since failure spurs some to try even harder and others to sink into depression. But you're trying to educate as many people as you can, and you can always motivate the motivated with other means and get the same results, whereas if you screw up the latter category of students, there's no way you can get that back.

But I do agree with pushing people to their limits, and you make a great point. Is the philosophy you're trying to convey here a household idea in most of US universities or was it just that way with MIT? Because I have to say it differs a lot from what I experienced back home and in Belgium. I was only on an exchange for six months in Belgium, but I can safely say that at least in Law it was the same as back home. No one ever expected you to know more than what was covered in lectures and books you were supposed to read, and talking to people doing medicine and social studies (I didn't know or talked to many people who studies sciences, unfortunately, but second-hand info tells me it still wasn't the way you describe) it was the same there, as well. If you had a question that wasn't covered somewhere, people would be really upset, as it would be something quite unusual. This doesn't mean there weren't any really hard questions, just that they pertained to topics we discussed at least.

I'm not saying what we did was the proper way, because I also realize there are vast differences between approaching Arts and Science studies, I'm just trying to portray the landscape of how it was/is where I studied and how I'm used to it being. I'm doing Physics now so maybe I will encounter some of what you said and if I think about it, our first Linear Algebra homework was in that vein, and later the professor even expressly mentioned that he wants to challenge us so that we really have to think about the stuff rather than just go through the motions.

However at my school, the super-duper genius would get 40% on the test, with some incentive to see if they could get 45%. The analogy with the UFC fighter is a good one. We know that you can stick in the ring for 5 seconds. Let's see if you can get in and fight for 6 seconds. OK, we see that you can fight for 6 seconds, let's see if you can fight for 15.

I think the problem with this approach is that at university you can't afford to test people for such a long time to see if they can last longer. By the time you're done doing that years pass, not only a semester, which the course was supposed to be taken in. And you also need to discern between great, good, average and sub-par fighters. If someone lasts for 6 seconds, others for 5 and then some only 4, then that is just too small of a difference to really make that distinction and the error in that assessment is just to great for you to be able to take the result seriously.

Sure but in the end, it didn't matter because grades were sort of bogus anyway.

If the grades are bogus, then there is of course no problem with such an approach, and really is just a (good) way to test people's limits.

 

[twofish-quant]

You first-year Calculus (Calc I) expected students to derive Green's theorem on a midterm when they should be tested on limits and derivatives?

Yes. Most students missed the question. I'm pretty sure I did.

Should I even take you seriously? My college is just a normal college, not one that makes everyone the next Euler

What do you want to do with your life? If you don't want to be the next Euler or Einstein, then why do you want to go to grad school.

One of the more common questions in which forum is are people asking what they have to do to get into a "top" graduate school, but if I wonder why, because the environment where people just dump stuff on you is the environment of graduate school.

 

[flyingpig]

Yes. Most students missed the question. I'm pretty sure I did.

Hold on a second, and you think it is fair to test students the definition of multiple integrals when they still haven't even grasped the concept of limits properly? That, they should do partial derivatives if the lecture (nor the book) taught them what a derivative even is?

How is that fair at all? It does not test the student's abilities, I bet even Einstein couldn't figure it out, I mean even the notations and symbols are different.

 

[G037H3]

How is that fair at all? It does not test the student's abilities, I bet even Einstein couldn't figure it out, I mean even the notations and symbols are different.

you do know that Einstein wasn't a strong mathematician right?...

(he also stole Relativity from Poincare, but that's another topic <3)

 

[flyingpig]

you do know that Einstein wasn't a strong mathematician right?...

(he also stole Relativity from Poincare, but that's another topic <3)

What do you mean? I thought he excelled in Physics and Math in high school. I think being a theoretical physicists says something about his mathematical abilities, but I could have used Euler

 

[Dembadon]

No you don't understand, it isn't a tough problem on a homework set. If so, all of us would go find the answer to that question.

Let me try this make this clear, google and other resources are useless because we don't even know what to look for.

It's like I want you to find a word in the dictionary that I have in my head, but first you have to guess that word in my head.

I do understand; I'm trying to get you to see another perspective and accept that it will be more beneficial for you to take on said perspective. If a professor puts a question on a test that is above the level of the course, one student might get it right, while 50 others have no clue.

Here's what we're getting at:

Instead of getting upset about a question that they felt was unfair, those 50 students who did not come up with a solution need to take their test and figure out why the solution to the the problem is what it is, using any resources available to them.

You keep saying that we aren't understanding your perspective because we aren't agreeing with you. We may just have to agree to disagree. Just because we aren't siding with you, doesn't mean we aren't understanding your issue.

Edit: How you respond to failure will be very important for your future, whether or not you choose to go to grad school. The issue in this particular situation is much bigger than this chemistry problem.

 

[G037H3]

What do you mean? I thought he excelled in Physics and Math in high school. I think being a theoretical physicists says something about his mathematical abilities, but I could have used Euler

he learned calculus by 15 or so, but he was by no means a world class mathematician

 

[flyingpig]

I do understand; I'm trying to get you to see another perspective and accept that it will be more beneficial for you to take on said perspective. If a professor puts a question on a test that is above the level of the course, one student might get it right, while 50 others have no clue.

Here's what we're getting at:

Instead of getting upset about a question that they felt was unfair, those 50 students who did not come up with a solution need to take their test and figure out why the solution to the the problem is what it is, using any resources available to them.

You keep saying that we aren't understanding your perspective because we aren't agreeing with you. We may just have to agree to disagree. Just because we aren't siding with you, doesn't mean we aren't understanding your issue.

Edit: How you respond to failure will be very important for your future, whether or not you choose to go to grad school. The issue in this particular situation is much bigger than this chemistry problem.

Only because one of you think it is a fair problem to ask students to derive Green's Theorem on a Calculus I midterm.

 

[Dembadon]

Only because one of you think it is a fair problem to ask students to derive Green's Theorem on a Calculus I midterm.

I'll try to be more succinct.

Productive/beneficial attitude:

"What a challenging problem. I should see if anyone wants to get together so that we can obtain a deeper/correct understanding of this concept."

Unproductive/hurtful attitude:

"This problem was unfair."

 

[QuarkCharmer]

Unless we knew your syllabus and the questions on the test, this argument is entirely pointless.

Wait until you get grades back from the exam and if virtually everyone did extremely poor and you can prove that the questions were not covered, or that you could not derive answers somehow from the knowledge you are suppose to possess... then maybe (if you can) get a group of people to take it up with the appropriate authority.

 

[flyingpig]

I'll try to be more succinct. One of the following attitudes will hinder you, and the other will benefit you in all areas of your life.

Productive/beneficial attitude:

"What a challenging problem. I should see if anyone wants to get together so that we can obtain a deeper/correct understanding of this concept."

Unproductive/hurtful attitude:

"This problem was unfair."

I am guessing that I fall under "hurtful attitude" category since I am complaining that "I couldn't derive Green's Theorem on a Calculus I exam because I don't even know what integrals are since this is our first midterm. Our last lecture covered the first definition of a derivative though"

 

[proof]

most of the responses in this thread seem ridiculous to me. yes in college there is a certain amount of self studying you need to do on your own and yes you are meant to be challenged further than a regurgitation of material but there is a limit. talk with your other classmates and try to gauge whether it was just you or not. if not then i would go talk to your professor about how you and quite a few others feel the exam / preparation was not fair. ask if there will be a curve etc etc. if the professor doesn't budge then it might be good to get another opinion. perhaps from another professor you know who could tell you if the exam was reasonable or not. because it is going to be important to distinguish if it's just you(and possibly other classmates as well) or if the exam truly was unfair. when you are certain the exam was unfair and the professor is unwilling to budge then you need to go to whoever is above him, then to the head of the department, and keep going up until you get to the dean if you have to until this is resolved. good luck. also if you want sometimes it is effective to just go straight to the highest person you can(like the dean of the school in this case)

 

[proof]

also, I don't really understand why some professors do things this way it's just kind of silly but i was in one class and the professor was kind of like this. class averages on the tests were in the 30's and 40's. he said there was going to be a curve though so all i worried about was how i did in relation to the other people. so if you did better than everybody else you are probably ok.

 

[flyingpig]

most of the responses in this thread seem ridiculous to me. yes in college there is a certain amount of self studying you need to do on your own and yes you are meant to be challenged further than a regurgitation of material but there is a limit. talk with your other classmates and try to gauge whether it was just you or not. if not then i would go talk to your professor about how you and quite a few others feel the exam / preparation was not fair. ask if there will be a curve etc etc. if the professor doesn't budge then it might be good to get another opinion. perhaps from another professor you know who could tell you if the exam was reasonable or not. because it is going to be important to distinguish if it's just you(and possibly other classmates as well) or if the exam truly was unfair. when you are certain the exam was unfair and the professor is unwilling to budge then you need to go to whoever is above him, then to the head of the department, and keep going up until you get to the dean if you have to until this is resolved. good luck. also if you want sometimes it is effective to just go straight to the highest person you can(like the dean of the school in this case)

That's what I mean, I don't mind putting challenging questions on stuff we have covered in the book and in lecture, but questions that came from neither is ridiculously unfair.

But I don't know how to gather even half the class together and discuss. Our board is patrolled by our professors... so everything we say are not anonymous

 

[deluks917]

I don't know about Green's theorem but "Prove Stoke's Theorem" really was a question on the 1854 Smith's prize exam. It was only "discovered" in 1850.

 

[proof]

That's what I mean, I don't mind putting challenging questions on stuff we have covered in the book and in lecture, but questions that came from neither is ridiculously unfair.

But I don't know how to gather even half the class together and discuss. Our board is patrolled by our professors... so everything we say are not anonymous

well the first thing i would do is try to find out if there is a curve. if there is then probably none of this matters and he is just one of the weird professors. you could do this in the very next class period, just raise your hand and be like "i was just wondering if there would be a curve on the exams or on our final grade in the class?". also when you are in class ask the people around you and you should be able to talk to 3 or 4 people about what they though of the exam. then maybe the next day switch seats so you can talk to 3 or 4 more people. and maybe you can talk to people after class somehow as they are leaving. if you know who the top students are in the class try to ask them if they thought it was fair.

also maybe this would be your best bet: what you could possibly do is create a thread on the class board and just say something about how you wanted to organize a study group to meet in the library to go over the exam and try to help each other correct some of your mistakes. then you will probably get a lot of people there and you can all discuss the exam and if everyone feels it was unfair also you can make plans to approach the teacher.

and if you aren't allowed to make posts of this nature on your class board then you could get to class early and tell the professor you wanted to announce plans for a study group really quick before he begins lecture. he probably wouldn't mind letting you make a quick announcement or he may even offer to do it for you. just make a time in the evening at like 7 or 8 when a lot of people can probably come. even if he is one of the weird professors he probably won't mind and may even like that you are trying to make a study group like this so i think he would let you make the announcement.

 

[Feldoh]

If you have never tackled a topic before, you can never complete the problem.

That doesn't make sense. Unless of course your professor gave you a problem on a test that has never been solved, which would be a little unfair.

The whole point of college is to teach people to think. A good way to test that ability is to give students problems they have not done before. There are a lot of professors that do this. In fact I'm taking a second class on E&M this semester. We've had two tests so far and BOTH of them has been material that has not been covered in class. The idea is that if we know the material that was taught in class it can be applied to solving new problems.

If you are going to complain about that I'm worried about what will happen when you get a real job? That's all the real world is -- problems that haven't been solved.

I remember taking a class on computer science a few years ago. One of the books we used was The Art of Computer Programming. There are literally problems at the end of chapters in that book that have not been solved, by anyone. Why put them in there? That's how you learn -- by thinking about things in new ways, new strategies. Sure, 99.9999999999999999% of people won't solve them but at least they could try. That's really the point of college. You're not really going to learn a specific subject. By the time you're out of college you don't really know that much about your major. What you should know is how to think. That's the important part.

 

[DrummingAtom]

Without seeing the question and sylabus whole discussion is a moot. Could be question is really outside of things that were covered, could be question should be perfectly doable based on things that were covered, you (flyingpig) just can't see it (hopefully - yet).

I agree completely with this.

To the OP: When people are saying it is fair what the professor did, you counter it with an even more outlandish claim. Why don't you just grab a syllabus and some questions of the exam then post them? I don't understand why you're wasting so much time trying to argue your point with zero evidence and insignificant analogies. You're a Science major, right? Would you argue a thesis this way?

 

[flyingpig]

I agree completely with this.

To the OP: When people are saying it is fair what the professor did, you counter it with an even more outlandish claim. Why don't you just grab a syllabus and some questions of the exam then post them? I don't understand why you're wasting so much time trying to argue your point with zero evidence and insignificant analogies. You're a Science major, right? Would you argue a thesis this way?

I don't have this exam on me because i took it two days ago and we got our results back. We didn't get the physical copy.

 

[G037H3]

you are unable to recall even the gist of the questions?

 

[General_Sax]

Yeah, exams in Uni suck. Sometimes you get screwed with incredibly hard questions. It's happened before and it will happen again.

 

[DrummingAtom]

I don't have this exam on me because i took it two days ago and we got our results back. We didn't get the physical copy.

That's my whole point, why are you wasting time just talking about it now. You're going to get your test back eventually. It would be better if you had some concrete evidence for your argument.

 

[Choppy]

One point I would add is that you have a right to ask the professor directly how people (collectively) did on the exam. If he doesn't publish the mark distribution for each question, you can send him a polite email asking for this. You have a right to know where you stand in relation to the rest of the class.

The particulars in this discussion may be moot, but the general philosophies are important. I think most university students encounter this intellectual hurdle at some point. I had a tough time with it as a young student. The things is most first year undergraduate classes consist of people who did pretty well in high school. So if every exam consisted of material that was only covered in the lecture notes, you would end up with marks similar to what everyone came in with in high school. Your class average would be around 85%. Just like in high school the guys who put in an extra hour of studying would do just as well as those who spent every night in the library, using course material as a base to build from, trying to challenge themselves, figuring out how what they were learning was used in senior classes. In the end how would THAT be fair?

 

[Borek]

I don't have this exam on me because i took it two days ago and we got our results back. We didn't get the physical copy.

You said you did the question with your brother.

 

[Valjeanie]

If you've learned enough in the course or in pre-requisite courses to 'theoretically' solve the problems on that test; as in, you've been taught the foundational assumptions and have been made aware of the tools needed to solve such problems, I consider those problems 'fair.' Though not always pedagogically worthwhile, of course.

Say in the case where someone's Calculus I course was asked to derive Green's theorem. If those guys hadn't been taught what the thing called 'Green's theorem' states, it's not a fair question. If instead of 'derive Green's theorem,' they're told to derive a relationship between a line integral around a simple closed curve C and a double integral over the plane region D bounded by C, which happens to be called 'Green's theorem,' then that's okay. Or maybe 'prove this theorem: <theorem written explicitly>." As long as they can speak the problem's language, meaning they've been taught the notation and so on, it's a legit problem.

If they haven't been taught those things, the test isn't testing the material covered in the course. Pedagogically this seems like a bad decision, but if a professor makes it clear that his or her tests are designed not to test what is covered in the course but rather to test any random ****, then it's also okay in this situation. But that strategy seems a bit strange.

To the people who think the OP's situation is all right: is it an OK test with you even if the students haven't been taught the foundations and the notations? Is it okay to ask questions on a Physics I test where v is not << c, without first teaching the postulates of special relativity? Maybe the really bright students can condense Einstein's Annus Mirabilis down into a single testing period and still have time left over to answer the questions?

The only students able to answer those sorts of questions will be those who've happened to pick up the material elsewhere. It turns into a dumb diagnostic. Just ask hard questions that can be solved by a really bright student who knows the explicit course material well enough.

 

[DrummingAtom]

The particulars in this discussion may be moot, but the general philosophies are important. I think most university students encounter this intellectual hurdle at some point. I had a tough time with it as a young student. The things is most first year undergraduate classes consist of people who did pretty well in high school. So if every exam consisted of material that was only covered in the lecture notes, you would end up with marks similar to what everyone came in with in high school. Your class average would be around 85%. Just like in high school the guys who put in an extra hour of studying would do just as well as those who spent every night in the library, using course material as a base to build from, trying to challenge themselves, figuring out how what they were learning was used in senior classes. In the end how would THAT be fair?

I agree with the "general philosophies" part. Although, what the OP is arguing is that this test was flat out unfair and without ever seeing this evidence no one can say if it was or wasn't. The OP is talking about rounding up classmates and storming the castle! At this point, some concrete examples are needed.

You said you did the question with your brother.

Hahaha, what the hell... This thread is getting absolutely ridiculous.

 

[atyy]

Welcome to college. You should give your professor a gift and say good things about them in their student evaluation because they are doing what a college professor should do.

You are not in high school any more. The rules are different. Most of the material on college tests will not be material that is directly covered in the courses and this is a good thing. Learn to get used to this, because this is going to be the way things are for now on, not just in college but in life.

The good news is that it probably won't damage your grades. You'll get a grade that seems really bad, but because things are curved, if you answer three questions out of five and most other people answer two, then you'll end up with a good grade.

I hope MIT isn't like this.

 

[cdotter]

Competition for what?

Competition for everything. Grade inflation is rampant. GPA is looked at closely when applying to graduate school, medical school, law school, dental school, pharmacy school, etc.

 

[twofish-quant]

Also there are two possibilities...

1) no one in the class got the question right. If that's the case there's no point in arguing that the question is unfair, because you didn't get hurt by the question being there,

2) some people in the class got the question right. If that's the case, you'll find it hard to argue that the question is unfair, because some of the people in the class got the question.

 

[Jack21222]

I wish I had more exam questions like the one the OP is complaining about.

My Physics 2 professor did something like this on the second midterm. He took a fairly complex test question from his circuit analysis class and made it worth something like 30% of the exam grade. It involved a symbol which we hadn't learned at the time, but he explained what it meant.

Of course, nobody in the class got it right, but he just wanted to test our understanding of the material, to see how we'd attack the problem. I enjoyed the challenge.

 

[atyy]

A hard question on a test is just a gimmick. Are real world problems solved within such tight time limits? No. They are very difficult, and take a long time to solve. If they have to be solved in a short time, sometimes you will be lucky and think quickly and solve it. Most of the time, you will fail catastrophically unless you are well prepared in advance.

 

[cdotter]

Also there are two possibilities...

1) no one in the class got the question right. If that's the case there's no point in arguing that the question is unfair, because you didn't get hurt by the question being there,

2) some people in the class got the question right. If that's the case, you'll find it hard to argue that the question is unfair, because some of the people in the class got the question.

Unless "some people" in the class had been exposed to the material before, outside of class.

 

[twofish-quant]

Unless "some people" in the class had been exposed to the material before, outside of class.

Yes, but that's a different issue. I do know of one situation in which a complaint against a prof was generally considered valid because he was lazy and used the exact same questions that was found on previous tests, and that was unfair because people that had copies of previous tests got an advantage over people that didn't.

But that prof was generally incompetent at teaching anyway. I think he ended up with the lowest instructor rating in the history of course evaluations, and there was a strong rumor that he was being intentionally incompetent because he hated teaching and wanted to make sure that no one ever put him in front of an undergraduate course ever again, which is what happened.