Saturday, October 22, 2005
What exams do to people...
We have exams this Monday till Wednesday. Everyone is studying hard and the library and break-out rooms at INSEAD are overflowing. Last night we saw the results of when people release that tension.
We had a barbecue last night and, as tradition prescribes, the person that had his birthday was thrown into the pool. Also, the person that won the Assassin Game (a.k.a. the top-killer) was thrown into the pool. These two decided that another person should also become soaked and from then on it became an exponential game: after about 15 minutes there were at least 30 people thrown into the pool. The guards at our apartment complex didn't like it, but we had a lot of fun :)
Also, we received the following mail from our Prices & Markets (Game Theory and such) professor. I think it is funny.
**************************
Hi everyone:
I forgot to mention one thing in the final session. Some of you may miss the final in which case you are entitled to a make-up exam. Of course that opens up possibilities of strategic considerations.
For instance some may think: "Let me take P&M and OB and I'll postpone Finance & Accounting. That way I can spread out the exams over 2 weeks giving me more time to prepare. That way I can jump to the top of the distribution." Evil laugh here!
Of course, this beats the purpose of the z-score and this would be very unfair to the rest of your classmates who show up on the allotted exam day. To discourage this behavior I always set much harder make-up exams. And I mean harder by leaps and bounds. Of course, this would punish those who are genuinely ill on that day which is again unfair - a double whammy so as to speak. Here is the signal I use to see if you faking: there are 2 exams everyday. If you miss one but make a remarkable recovery to show up for the next one I take this as a sure sign of faking. Then you get a very hard exam. If you miss both, then the makeup exam has the same level of difficulty as the normal final. But we'll make sure that both the makeup exams are on the same day.
A second and perhaps a more powerful incentive to not do this: while your classmates are swimming - in alcohol or otherwise - you will be working.
We had a barbecue last night and, as tradition prescribes, the person that had his birthday was thrown into the pool. Also, the person that won the Assassin Game (a.k.a. the top-killer) was thrown into the pool. These two decided that another person should also become soaked and from then on it became an exponential game: after about 15 minutes there were at least 30 people thrown into the pool. The guards at our apartment complex didn't like it, but we had a lot of fun :)
Also, we received the following mail from our Prices & Markets (Game Theory and such) professor. I think it is funny.
**************************
Hi everyone:
I forgot to mention one thing in the final session. Some of you may miss the final in which case you are entitled to a make-up exam. Of course that opens up possibilities of strategic considerations.
For instance some may think: "Let me take P&M and OB and I'll postpone Finance & Accounting. That way I can spread out the exams over 2 weeks giving me more time to prepare. That way I can jump to the top of the distribution." Evil laugh here!
Of course, this beats the purpose of the z-score and this would be very unfair to the rest of your classmates who show up on the allotted exam day. To discourage this behavior I always set much harder make-up exams. And I mean harder by leaps and bounds. Of course, this would punish those who are genuinely ill on that day which is again unfair - a double whammy so as to speak. Here is the signal I use to see if you faking: there are 2 exams everyday. If you miss one but make a remarkable recovery to show up for the next one I take this as a sure sign of faking. Then you get a very hard exam. If you miss both, then the makeup exam has the same level of difficulty as the normal final. But we'll make sure that both the makeup exams are on the same day.
A second and perhaps a more powerful incentive to not do this: while your classmates are swimming - in alcohol or otherwise - you will be working.
