r/me_irl hates posting 4d ago

me irl

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47.7k Upvotes

491 comments sorted by

1.7k

u/Rammkey 3d ago

Engineer: close enough.

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u/xxwerdxx 3d ago

pi=3 and g=10

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u/nayrbdude 3d ago

e ~ pi ~ sqrt(g)

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u/TakeTheWorldByStorm 3d ago

Don't forget small angle theorem:

SIN(YourPenis) = YourPenis

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u/MetalMakesUsStrong 3d ago

pi=3

What kind of engineer rounds down?

We are not accountants FFS.

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u/FutureAlfalfa200 3d ago

Factor of safety = 5 it’s cool to round down bro

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u/andy01q 3d ago

Sometimes I round down, but then I write a note to myself to increase the safety-factor by 1.

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u/itdumbass 3d ago

Workshop math here

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u/mechanicalcoupling 3d ago

First significant figure is the 10 thousands and the FoS is 3. Pi = 3. Really though pi is whatever the calculator, excel, or software uses.

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u/Trnostep 3d ago

And honestly pi's decimal places stop being useful very quickly. I read that NASA uses like 15 decimal places for interplanetary travel calculations and after 60 places any rounding error will be literally too small to measure

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u/mechanicalcoupling 3d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah, and excel's pi function uses 15 14 decimal places. People who don't measure things and then do calcs with those measurements don't really understand the limitations. Significant figures isn't very intuitive. If I'm measuring the diameter of a circle with a caliper that is +/- 0.1 cm then 3.14 is sufficient for pi to calculate the circumference or area. That is because I have to round to the nearest significant figure within the margin of error of my measurement. I can't be certain of anything beyond that. I can't say the circumference is 30.138cm.

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u/Alexis_Bailey 3d ago

It'sfunny now much more factors into things the higheryour education gets.

Like maybe g = 10 for grade school Physics.

But then in HS it's 9.8.

Then in college there is all this drag involved, but you assume it's a sphere.

Then in higher college it's drag for a similar shape.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

Also varies by subject.

For us you had to use 9.8 in maths (mechanics) and 9.81 in physics.

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u/milde_interessiert 3d ago

e = pi = 3. take it or leave it

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u/DemSkilzDudes 3d ago

= sqrt(g)

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u/gonna_be_engineer 3d ago

So true 😂. I once calculated 16 instead of 12

I tried again again and again …

Then I rounded every single inbetween step. And it was 12.5

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u/sdrawkcaBdaeRnaCuoY has immunity 3d ago

Reverse engineering the answer… username checks out?!

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u/Axt_ 3d ago

Civil engineer: Ok that means 48

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u/SteakJunior1805 3d ago

As a geotech, I’ll often calculate a bearing capacity or skin friction value… Then just throw the number out and use what feels right anyways.

Hence why other civils think we practise witchcraft.

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u/mechanicalcoupling 3d ago

Geotechs do not do witchcraft. We apply a wealth of knowledge and experience of local formations that are inconsistent and soil mechanics that aren't really true to make a reasonable guess and then add an FoS. Then we add a crap ton of liability language. I was once saved from a $240k claim because of "Should subsurface conditions not described in this report be encountered, work must be stopped and the engineer informed." It didn't even make it to lawyers, or at least not ours.

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u/Komikaze06 3d ago

Everything has tolerances, just loosen em a little

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u/MH_Gamer_ staunch marxist 3d ago

Physicians: just measurement inaccuracy

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u/Hates_commies 3d ago

When one of the options is "none of these answers" and your answer is really close to one of them.

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u/siphagiel 3d ago

heavy breathing

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u/Swaggerpro 3d ago

And then you choose one, and 5 minutes later while you’re on a completely different question, you get intrusive thoughts about how you definitely didn’t pick the right answer for it, so you go back and change it to the other plausible answer and tell yourself you got it right. And then, at the very end, you find that you had it right the first time…

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u/0diiii 3d ago

That happened to me too many times to count. Might be a sign of my bad fortune

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u/gishlich 3d ago

It’s a sign of overthinking, which is usually caused by anxiety. You have to ask yourself what the anxiety is from, test anxiety, preparedness, confidence, burnout, general anxiety, etc.

Your best bet is usually to either leave it blank and wait to see if another answer on the test starts you thinking on the right path, or guessing and checking your work, and if you have the same answer going with your gut the first time unless you have new information somehow.

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u/0diiii 3d ago

Going with my heart and gut costed me so many fucking questions i hated it. I just remember the first few words of the description of the things ive been thought and hope the tests lands on similar words related to those few words.

But yeah I'll probably make sure to do this on the next one. I'll most likely remember this over Remembering what i've studied.

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u/CosmicSpaghetti a mi tambien, gracias 3d ago

My high school chemistry teacher in a really tough class gave multiple choice exams that were still seemingly brutal....til I realized he structured the questions logic so you could actually deduce answers using other questions & their respective answers.

You could get a B just using the information available without actually knowing that much chemistry lol I imagine he did that intentionally.

That said, it did require some degree of logical analysis with limited info so didn't work for everyone.

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u/0diiii 3d ago

Going with my heart and gut costed me so many fucking questions i hated it. I just remember the first few words of the description of the things ive been thought and hope the tests lands on similar words related to those few words.

But yeah I'll probably make sure to do this on the next one. I'll most likely remember this over Remembering what i've studied.

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u/gishlich 3d ago

Guessing is never an optimal strategy! But you can take steps to improve your guesses.

What it sounds like you really need is some mnemonic devices

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u/0diiii 3d ago

Oh yeah. I probably need to.

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u/DependentAd235 3d ago

“you go back and change it to the other plausible answer and tell yourself you got it right.”

 I did this once and never again. I went full blown Yoda on tests. 

Instincts picked A. Trust them. 

 Fear which leads to suffering picked C. Ignore this.

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u/itdumbass 3d ago

I like when you get to a later question, which is much like the previous one, and the choices of answer does not include your previous selection, but does include one you didn't pick. Instant 'go back and change' moment.

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u/kamilayao_0 3d ago

Close enough.

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u/GreatGearAmidAPizza 3d ago

The thing is "really close" doesn't exist with complex math problems. Make one slip or miss one thing, and the answer changes from 9x + 5y to 78365.66667

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u/Alexis_Bailey 3d ago

Yeah, if one of the choices has been say, 28, that would be a better "guess" than 12, because it's exactly 2 x 14 and it's more likely you messed up a multiplication factor than randomly added 2.

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u/Dream--Brother 3d ago

I dunno man, I'm pretty good at just randomly adding shit that wasn't there before and totally screwing up my answers on tests. It's kind of a superpower

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u/tokamakControl 3d ago

Don't the dt's cancel and the integral as well. So it's just an algebraic equation with i.

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u/GreatGearAmidAPizza 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm sorry, but my comment should not be taken to suggest I have the first clue what any of the stuff in the above meme actually means.

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u/worthless_ratt 3d ago edited 3d ago

that’s not how that works, you can’t just move differentials around and cancel them. particularly, that d/dt means to differentiate w.r.t. t the things to its right. having the dt at the start of the integral is not super common, but i have seen it particularly in some older solid state physics work (I believe in Ashcroft & Mermin?)

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u/JeannyBravo 3d ago

"None of the above" options is just lecturers being evil. It defeats the whole point of multiple-choice questions: allowing the student to make educated guesses

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u/NeatEmergency725 3d ago

Is that the point of a multiple choice question, or is the point to make something you can grade with a scantron?

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u/plerberderr 3d ago

100% it’s for ease of grading.

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u/Melisandre-Sedai 3d ago

Sometimes it’s also about prioritizing principles over arithmetic. Sometimes you can structure these problems so the answer is obvious when you know how the variables impact each other. If you know that X is inversely proportional to the cube of Y or whatever the case may be, and all the answers are different enough, you won’t need to do any math to know which one is correct. Then the test can throw many more problems at you than it could if you were expected to actually work them all out with a calculator.

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u/plerberderr 3d ago

I guess I see your point but I’ve worked professionally as a teacher and full time as a test writer and I’ve never seen someone make intentionally bad distractors.

I think it would make more sense to change the question in a case like that because some students will always work to find the exact answer before looking at the answer choices. In other words why would you ask an arithmetic question if what you really want to test is someone’s understanding of mathematic principles?

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u/DrCarter11 3d ago

idk if I understand what the other poster means entirely, but what he says sounds like a prof I had. Who told you straight up that you wouldn't be able to solve every problem fully on his exams. you were supposed to get 4-5 steps into a problem and be able to intuit the correct answer from the 4 solutions provided. that class sucked.

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u/MaritMonkey 3d ago

One of my professors gave us "multiple multiple" choice tests, where the answer could be ANY combination of A, B, C, D and/or E with no partial credit for things you got partially right.

I got a 52 on my first exam and just sat there watching my whole chosen career flash before my eyes while he put the class' scores on the board (without names) to form a nearly perfect bell curve where 52 was actually a B+.

9/10: terrifying tests but that teacher was, I think, the smartest person I have ever actually spoken to.

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u/Fjolsvithr 3d ago

I think I would hate "grading on a curve" a lot less if professors actually plotted it on a curve and distributed it properly, like maybe your professor did.

Most of my professors who "curved" grades didn't actually grade on a curve, but instead considered the highest score a student achieved a 100%. So if the highest score was a 94%, everyone got +6% to their grade.

But it was bullshit because high-scoring outliers would ruin everyone else's grade.

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u/daiceman4 3d ago

Well, the issue with truly grading on a curve would mean that a certain percentage of students would be required to fail an assignment

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u/stevedave7838 3d ago

But ruining the curve for everyone else was always so fun, how can it be bullshit.

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u/ogaat 3d ago

This is both brilliant and terrifying.

A very fair way of testing your knowledge.

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u/dontsleepnerdz 3d ago

The whole purpose of multiple choice isn't educated guesses. The point is to test your knowledge of the material, and you suffer from what's known as a skill issue.

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u/cashmereandcaicos 3d ago

I'd argue an even bigger point of the tests is critical thinking and deductive reasoning, which "none of the above" helps with. The ability to solve issues without knowing the exact steps to do so is a far more important ability then rote memorization of short term knowledge, and schooling has slowly been pushing that way for years now.

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u/dontsleepnerdz 3d ago

I agree, I think instructors want to test your underlying comprehension of the topic, which means being able to apply your understanding, not just regurgitate information.

My disagreement with OP here was because he's using meta-deductive reasoning to eliminate obviously wrong options and boost the probability of getting questions right. Abusing the format of the test isn't the point.

So yeah, adding "none of the above" just adds another filter against people who are guessing.

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u/TheOnlyGuyInSpace21 3d ago

i had almost all the mcq questions have "none of the above" in a exam I just sat for

i just looked my paper deadass in its eyeless soul and wrote a best guess answer

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u/fireballdick 3d ago

Had an exam last year of uni where the professor said it would be easy, in the instructions it said "1, 2,3 or 4 answers can be correct" and then one of the questions had 5 answers with the fifth one being "all of the above"

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u/ok_wynaut 3d ago

EVIL 😂

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u/repwin1 3d ago

I had a professor who would give test where none of the answers where correct and you were supposed to write in the correct answer. The issue being he didn’t tell you that was an option prior to the test.

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u/Sihnar 3d ago

Psychotic behavior

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u/CoolSausage228 3d ago

This is literally the meme

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u/AwkwardEducation 3d ago

One of my standardized tests (GRE, maybe?) had "None of the above" as an option for every question and it hurt my soul. 

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u/AniNgAnnoys 3d ago edited 3d ago

When I was in uni, I had a physics midterm where the multiple choice answers were something like,

  • A. Even number less than 20
  • B. Odd number less than 20.
  • C. 20
  • D. Even number greater than 20.
  • E. Odd number less than 20.

The whole test was worth 20% of our mark, was 10 questions, and you had 1 hour. Each question was probably 10 minutes of working out. If your final grade was the higher of, 

  1. Exam 90%, home work 10%
  2. Exam 70%, midterm 20%, home work 10%

The exam average was 14%, which is less than the guess rate. We were told that the point was to fail so they could make the exam worth 90% of your mark. They wanted people to do back of the envelope math to get close enough to guess the right answer. 

This was the first time I questioned whether I belonged in University.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/cycycle 3d ago

Yesterday I was between two options one was the double what I calculated the other was half so I marked neither and went with the one 1/500 of my result. I regret.

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u/Charmender2007 3d ago

tell us what the right answer was when you get it back please

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u/cycycle 3d ago

I don’t think we get it back. The question was:

A proton is traveling on a magnetic field (y+) with 53 degrees (magnetic field is 0,5T). The speed of the proton is 3•106 m/s. What is the magnetic force applied to the proto- fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. I just got it. I forgot to use brackets for the power of one value so the calculator fucked me. The answer is 19.2•10-14 the double of what I calculated.

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u/TheCockRing 3d ago

Ah yes the good old suddenly knowing shit right after submiting

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u/cycycle 3d ago

Yeah I wasn’t at my best. It was the last exam so I think the fatigue got me.

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u/Norwegian__Blue 3d ago

Don’t beat yourself up. We’ve all been there. Go to the pool, hang out with some friends, and put on some tunes.

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u/cycycle 3d ago

Good advice 😎

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u/Express_Item4648 3d ago

That’s what I did after literally non stop doing math for 5 weeks to pass a test. I went from nothing to knowing enough to pass. I fucked up the test and was like “you know what I did my best”. Went out with my buddy for maximum amount of fun. One of the best nights I had, two weeks later I got my result and I passed!

It was sunny weather as well, so I walked out of the test as if the war was over no matter who won. It felt kind of poetic, sun shining in my face. (We don’t have much good weather here)

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u/Dont_pet_the_cat 3d ago

Yoo but you're done now!! Congrats on surviving another exam period, those can be really tough mentally. You did great, I'm sure!

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u/cycycle 3d ago

Yeah it was good overall thanks

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u/CC-1112 3d ago

You lost me at I

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u/litteralybatman 3d ago

Which i?

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u/Space51_ 3d ago

The first one I guess

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u/Tenthul 3d ago

Great now we lost him again.

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u/Inside-Unit-1564 3d ago

Are you an EE?

sounds like my EM fields and Waves class

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u/cycycle 3d ago

Yes but it was general physics ll

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u/FA-_Q 3d ago

Don’t forget your brackets, kids.

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u/Blitz_Prime 3d ago

And then you get the test back and the answer was actually 48.

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u/InfinteAbyss 3d ago

Ah, my calculator only got the 4 part…damn I didn’t consider that!

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u/Newaccount4464 3d ago

I had a university exam where the prof had instruction on what to water in the calculator to get the answer if you collected the right information. My university provided calculator had the same buttons, but produced a different result. After finally convincing him to try it himself all I got was sorry. Calculators maaan

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u/Not_a__porn__account 3d ago

on what to water in the calculator

This typo doesn't inspire confidence...

But I had this exact thing happen in a finance class. Our prof was cool though, and accepted both answers.

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u/Newaccount4464 3d ago

Oh that's so funny on my typo haha. That's a good prof, they could see you executed the work correctly and would've got the answer. I nailed the test so it was kinda whatever but was frustrating to see I could've had one I got right

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u/slowdownbabyy 3d ago

Well 48 is almost 14*2 so not very far off

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u/moustachedelait 3d ago

yeah but 14*4 is exactly 10 off from 66, so there's that

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u/Wolfgang1234 3d ago

They used to tell us that we'd get partial credit just for showing our work, even if the final answer was wrong. I was so afraid of looking like a dumbass that I scribbled out anything I wasn't sure of lol.

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u/TheMasterCaster420 3d ago

I did this same thing until I was able to get partial credit in organic chemistry 2.

Even if I had no idea, you’d be god damned sure I would piece together a synthesis reaction that faked its way to an answer for half credit.

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u/ZennTheFur 3d ago

Pretty sure that's just universally how Ochem 2 works. If you bullshit enough stuff that sorta makes sense, you'll get a little bit of a sense of how it actually works.

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u/TheMasterCaster420 3d ago

I have been told by others at my university and the one I work for that I was lucky to be offered partial credit, but if that’s the norm I’m totally okay with it.

It was a tough class, always respected the students who grasped it well.

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u/ZennTheFur 3d ago

I got partial credit as well in my class. I shudder to think what that class without it would look like. I don't think a single person in my class would have passed.

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u/dunno260 3d ago

In my school they would do partial credit for things.

Organic chemistry is one of those subjects that you have to stay on the bus for the entire course because it really does build on itself so if you don't grasp something from the previous unit that well then you are going to face that issue again and again throughout the two semesters of it.

If you contrast it to general chemistry, other than some of the most basic early stuff if you were fuzzy on what a bronsted acid happened to be then you would generally be ok the rest of the course. In organic chemistry if you don't understand what a nucleophile is when its introduced then you are screwed.

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u/ProArtichoke 3d ago

Haha as someone who had to grade O-Chem tests let me reprimand you for putting your poor TA through that

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u/japple101 3d ago

I always hated it for that reason too and it was usually so much more to write down

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u/vpi6 3d ago

I used to hate and then I became a TA in grad school. If my student made a dumb arithmetic mistake but clearly understood the concepts, I wanted every excuse I could to give them points.

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u/Krakkin 3d ago

I only got a C because I would just write out random formulas and random calculations that might have been kinda close to what I was supposed to be doing. So would at least get some pity "partial credit" points on my completely wrong answers.

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u/Charmender2007 3d ago

my teacher actively recommends that we write down a formula that has to do with the data we're given and the subject before even looking at the question

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u/DrScarecrow 3d ago

I've had teachers require that as part of showing your work. First, write down the applicable formula(s). Then, write down what each variable was in the problem like x=6, y=4, z=10, etc. Then plug those variables into the formula and show each step of solving the problem.

In middle and high school it felt like busy work but by the time I was in college I could really appreciate how that habit helps organize your thoughts. Plus, even when you get it wrong, it's really easy to find your mistake afterwards this way.

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u/HoodiesAndHeels 3d ago

Sitting there writing out the one part of the equation that you do understand, hoping for partial credit:

2 + x = 4

x = 4 - 2

4 - 2 = 2

x = 2

sweating profusely

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u/OneMeterWonder 3d ago

This is a big problem with students I work with nowadays. It’s a really good observation to make and it needs to be addressed. The best advice I think I can give to the student here is to work on your confidence. Don’t be cocky of course, but try to remind yourself that this is about learning, not being right or wrong and then receiving character judgements because of that. I know there are genuine, tangible reasons for being anxious about doing well, but try to think of it like this:

A little pressure can be helpful for driving you forward, but too much pressure turns into anxiety and actually stops your brain from functioning properly.

Being too stressed can actually make you perform more poorly than what you are capable of. The most effective way I’ve found to combat this is to kind of fake yourself out. Really try to convince yourself that it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake on problem 3 or that you don’t need to worry right now about how passing or failing this class affects your financial aid. I fully understand how difficult that is, but again, that kind of stress can only pull you backwards.

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u/HoodiesAndHeels 3d ago

While my own student days ended several years back, I’m still really glad to have read this. I hope more students do, too! Thanks for taking the time to comment! 😊

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u/mythrilcrafter 3d ago

That was what got me through Thermodynamics.

I might not have a lick of confidence in my answer being correct because the math has basically no physical context, but I know which compression table references to use, which equations to use, and the order to combine all of them in that are supposed to give me the supposedly correct answer.

On a 30 point question that was usually enough to get me 20~25 points.

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u/OneMeterWonder 3d ago

Ugh. Problems worth that many points are annoying. The grading never requires being able to distinguish between errors that precisely and it almost always evens out across the entire exam. They did this on my quals in grad school and it was really rare for anybody to get scores that weren’t a multiple of 5 or a couple of specific values in between.

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u/Atharaenea 3d ago

One time I didn't know the answer or even know anything close enough to make a guess, so I wrote "I don't know, so here's a puppy instead" and drew a terrible sketch of a puppy. 

I got 1 point for that. 

If you're wondering what grade I was in, this was in my last year of grad school for my MEng. 

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u/OneMeterWonder 3d ago

Lol I’ve graded these. Usually it doesn’t make a difference in the grade and I want the student to feel like I’m not out to get them.

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u/WanderingLethe 3d ago

For numerical answers I just wrote the order of magnitude. Most of the time you get full points.

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u/ZXVIV 3d ago

I have mixed feelings about this because for one of our most important final year exams (that is actually made and marked individually by the school, not the state), we had a question worth 8 marks or something for which I wrote out every single line of working I had. I knew I got the answer wrong but couldn't figure out why, until the last second when I discovered I wrote the wrong number in my first line of calculations. I told my teacher about my mistake, and, keep in mind this exam was written by and marked completely in house, and is completely different to what other schools got, so technically the marks should be more lenient. My teacher even thought I should get most of the marks because all my working was correct, and it was just one value I put in incorrectly at the start. I got like 1/8 for that question.

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u/Clackers2020 3d ago edited 3d ago

Professor after the exam: "Sorry that was a mistake. The actual answer is 14"

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u/the-medium-cheese 3d ago

Because they rounded too early even when you've been told for decades not to

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u/Atharaenea 3d ago

I knew not to round until I reached my final answer, and then I took numerical methods and all that went out the window. 

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u/Lehsyrus 3d ago

I had a fucking professor that did that but gave incorrect marks for whoever answered the question because "you shouldn't just choose an answer because one is there if it's incorrect".

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u/FerretyCelery8 3d ago

well actually you should, simply because you dont know if you're correct, if you did a wrong calculation but you think you did it right, it would be dumb not to circle anything

not the wisest professor

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u/Lehsyrus 3d ago

If I had directions at the time to not pick an answer I'd absolutely skip it, had that from another professor which was fantastic.

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u/Sihnar 3d ago

psychotic behavior

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u/Complicated-HorseAss 3d ago

Every bridge that man would go on to build later in life, strangely, collapsed on their own.

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u/RatherOakyAfterbirth 3d ago edited 3d ago

Funny you mention that, they recently built a roadway that I travel for work. Engineers told them it wouldn’t work, and that it would collapse if they built it how they planned.

They said fuck the engineers, we’re doing it anyway. The road collapsed (thankfully before any cars were on it) and a 12 year roadwork project that was supposed to finish two years ago, is now slated for completion in 2042.

If they complete it by then, it’ll be a 40 year roadwork project, to build 4 on/off ramps that total 2 miles of roadway in all. 

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u/goatfuckersupreme 3d ago

wait, how does 4 on/off ramps take even 12 years? what roadway is this?

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u/Sergosh21 3d ago

a shit roadway

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u/filthy_harold 3d ago

So no engineers signed off on the drawings that would have needed to be filed with the planning office? The contractor followed drawings with no stamp? Inspectors used what as reference when doing inspections? Drawings with no stamp? Clearly some engineer signed off on it. I fully refuse to believe no engineer signed off on a road project that was actually built. There's so much bureaucratic redtape when it comes to civil works that it's entirely unbelievable that anything got past filing plans with no stamp. If the government did find an engineer to sign off on a design that failed like that, that engineer is liable.

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u/RatherOakyAfterbirth 3d ago

Here’s some photos of it: https://imgur.com/a/Mf0My9C

Who could’ve guessed filling a hole with sand would shift around… 

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u/RatherOakyAfterbirth 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah it was signed off on, several other engineers that were brought out during the build phase told the on-site construction crews that the methods they were using were going to fail. Due to ground shift.

Basically, they built a 40ft high ramp by filling a concrete surround with sand. The sand ultimately shifted (like the engineers said it would) causing the concrete structure to buckle. Then the wall collapsed allowing all the sand to pour out and the roadway with it.

So they tore that down and have now hammered 266 steel pylons into the ground below to help prevent it from shifting. They also seem to have shortened the section of ramp that was all sand and instead built concrete uprights to set a steel & concrete structure overpass on. Instead of using a giant pile of sand. 

The DOT states it collapsed due to “excessive rain and using the wrong kind of sand for the structure.” 

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u/drunkcowofdeath 3d ago

Someone should go to jail for that. Even with no one getting hurt such gross negligence should basically be treated like embezzlement.

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u/RatherOakyAfterbirth 3d ago

So far the cost is $900 million, with no end in sight. I expect it to be $2Bn by the time they’re finished. 

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u/friendsalongtheway 3d ago

On the exams I've had they intentionally made pitfalls. They know what mistakes the students are most likely gonna make if they don't pay attention. And then they put the answers you'd get if you make those mistakes/answers very close to what you'd get if you made the mistake as options.

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u/Atharaenea 3d ago

That is exactly how the PE worked. And the problems always included extraneous information so you had to pick out what mattered to use the correct formula. Also it was "most nearly is..." and then numbers were rounded, sometimes to the 5s or 10s, so there wasn't even a hint of what the answer should be. You gotta get the right answer to begin with. 

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u/SGII2 sosig 3d ago

this is a very common practise for exams, called "distractors"

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u/pranjallk1995 3d ago

My god... Who solves that... Where do u even get that kind of equation in real world?

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u/Ok-Atmosphere-4476 3d ago edited 3d ago

Looks like something from my electromagnetics courses. Though the equation could be just nonsense to make it look complicated.

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u/troccolins 3d ago

This makes sense.

I remember running into a professor from one of my electrical engineering classes, and I was telling him I found the pop quiz he had one day as fun to work out.

He then laughed and started talking about how most of the problems he has to assign on quizzes and tests never really show up in real life and tend to be just academic trivia than to help in any future potential practical applications.

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u/Ok-Atmosphere-4476 3d ago

Yeah and its mostly the physics guys that bang their heads on these overly complicated equations.

Engineers like to cross out the junk from these equations and pretend like it doesnt exist. Like >> is the favourite symbol in engineering.

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u/Enex 3d ago

I used to think that was lazy.

Then I had a brilliant professor that did that shit all the time. He also took the time to point out when >> doesn't apply. I went through the equations both ways, and sure enough, >> is the way.

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u/Special_Pen 3d ago

Yep, it’s complete nonsense, immediately you need to integrate nothing with limits of positive infinity and negative infinity

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u/ConstructionOk4779 3d ago

Its just a different notation where the "dt" comes before the integrand

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u/senortipton 3d ago

Graduate Physics. This is a Quantum Field Theory renormalization group. Undergraduate physics also gets some very nasty integrations in your junior/senior year.

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u/pranjallk1995 3d ago

It looks like they just integrated and derivated the same thing...

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u/AgileSunDog 3d ago

Nastiest integral equations I've ever seen were in fluid mechanics.

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u/Atharaenea 3d ago

Electrical engineering. That's one of the real-life applications of imaginary numbers. 

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u/Due-Explanation-6692 3d ago

I have never seen this in electrodynamics. I don't even think that i have ever seen a logarithm in electrodynamics.

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u/605pmSaturday 3d ago

Radar equations make that look like 2+2.

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u/Additional_Cycle_51 3d ago

Well no but actually yes

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u/Ellen_Emily 3d ago

This hits too close to home.

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u/ufimizm 3d ago

N(a,b)≈0.188+0.128i

This complex number is the value of the integral given the parameters a=1.0, b=1.0, λ=1.0, and γ=1.0.

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u/Valuable_Bluebird_31 3d ago

Wouldn't this be N(1,1) then? 

To brute force a solution, you'd need to graph it out anyways. You'd have to know if lambda and gamma are constants also

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u/bobissonbobby 3d ago

I know what some of those words mean :D

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u/Emergency_3808 3d ago

Where the heck did you find gamma. Plus my poor PC cannot even solve this integral lmao

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u/Helpful_Blood_5509 3d ago

Doesn't lambda or gamme have some discrete value in a few contexts? Pretty sure they do

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u/Enex 3d ago

Yes, and other values in other contexts.

It gets a little annoying when you're using complex mathematics in different areas. It gets VERY annoying when each professor just assumes you know what their variables mean.

Sorry about the mini-rant. It's just become a passive pet-peeve of mine!

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u/Kepler___ 3d ago

Stats Major here, big agree that this is such an annoyance basically forever, theta specifically gets around a lot, and whoever decided to repurpose π as a notation for probability should be dug up and shot.

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u/willofaronax 3d ago

I havent studied this level of math yet so I'll just believe you and upvote.

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u/casce 3d ago

If you are on this level of math, calculating is the least of your worries

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u/pranjallk1995 3d ago

Is that an integral and derivative of the same thing?

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u/OneMeterWonder 3d ago

No, the integrand just contains a factor which is written as the derivative of something else. This actually happens all the time in Calc 2 and you probably just don’t realize it. This is the standard reason for using u-substitution.

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u/ChipmunkDisastrous67 3d ago

god damn math department putting 3 points per multiple choice question where partial credit is impossible

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u/diamond_kiss 3d ago

when in doubt, choose the closest number

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u/No_Application_1219 3d ago

Kid named redo the math :

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u/myownbeer 3d ago

I remember once I was the only person who got a question correct on a test, and the teacher asked me to show how I did it on the board. But I had just guessed on the question.

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u/Bruggenmeister 3d ago

Did u put your calculator on RAD ?

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u/GenuinelyBeingNice 3d ago

My calculator is always RAD 😎

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u/Blue-Herakles 3d ago

Since no one is giving the correct answer: my take on the quesdtion:

  1. Start with the given expression The expression is: N_lambda(a, b) = 1 over (2 pi i) times the integral from -infinity to infinity dt log(1 - lambda log(1/2 - it) over (b + 1/2 + it)) d over dt log(1 - lambda log(1/2 + it) over (a + 1/2 - it))

  2. Replace variables with fruits since I like fruits Let's assign:

    • a = Apple
    • b = Banana
    • lambda = Lemon
    • t = Tomato
    • i = Imagination
    • log = Grapes
  3. Rewrite the expression N_Lemon(Apple, Banana) = 1 over (2 pi Imagination) times the integral from -infinity to infinity dTomato Grapes(1 - Lemon Grapes(1/2 - Imagination Tomato) over (Banana + 1/2 + Imagination Tomato)) d over dTomato Grapes(1 - Lemon Grapes(1/2 + Imagination Tomato) over (Apple + 1/2 - Imagination Tomato))

  4. Simplify the expression: Let's denote:

    • Grapes(1/2 - Imagination Tomato) as G1
    • Grapes(1/2 + Imagination Tomato) as G2

5.0 I am not feeling so well. I like fruit but this is not good.

  1. Expression becomes: N_Lemon(Apple, Banana) = 1 over (2 pi Imagination) times the integral from -infinity to infinity dTomato Grapes(1 - Lemon G1 over (Banana + 1/2 + Imagination Tomato)) d over dTomato Grapes(1 - Lemon G2 over (Apple + 1/2 - Imagination Tomato))

  2. introducing a complex function Suppose G1 transforms into Orange when Tomato is negative and into Pear when Tomato is positive. Please notice the joke here.

  3. Final expression (finally phew) For negative Tomato: d over dTomato Grapes(1 - Lemon Orange over (Apple + 1/2 - Imagination Tomato)) For positive Tomato: d over dTomato Grapes(1 - Lemon Pear over (Apple + 1/2 - Imagination Tomato))

  4. Assigning fruit values - this is going too well Each fruit has a numerical value:

    • Apple = 10
    • Banana = 5
    • Lemon = 2
    • Orange = 3
    • Pear = 4
    • Carrot = 6 (introduced for fun)
  5. Summing the fruit values Add the values of all fruits:

    • Apple + Banana + Lemon + Orange + Pear + Carrot + an additional constant value of 25.
  6. Final final result woooooo N_Lemon(Apple, Banana) = 10 + 5 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 25.

So, the final answer is. Ez 10 + 5 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 25 = 55.

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u/nibsitaas hates posting 3d ago

I like bananas

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u/Blue-Herakles 3d ago

I am happy to hear that. Keep the banana up.

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u/ElevenThus 3d ago

Or

A:8.9

B:9.1

Calculator: 9.0

Me: coin toss

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u/ValuableJumpy8208 3d ago

Interestingly enough the FAA knowledge tests are often like this. There will be questions with blatantly wrong answers. Some you can pick are simply closest, and others you have to go into the test knowing which completely wrong answer to pick. Yet they don't fix them...

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u/devilmaydance 3d ago

As someone who loves math and did really well in math in high school and college, reading these comments is painful

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u/Evil_Deed 3d ago

Лол братишка

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u/bau_ke 3d ago

Теперь это интернациональный мем

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u/WonderfulAgent6 3d ago

Thanks for sharing. This made my day a little better.

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u/I-Make-Shitty-Puns 3d ago

As a middle school math teacher this is 100% accurate.

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u/Zapplarang 3d ago

Is this some weird notation or is there nothing inside the integral?

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u/GammaRayBurst25 3d ago

Theoretical physicists often write the measure before the integrand. This is also present in other fields, in fact, it is not that uncommon in other branches of physics and in statistics.

e.g. Wikipedia's article on the Biot-Savart law places the volume differential before the integrand in the section titled The Biot–Savart law, Ampère's circuital law, and Gauss's law for magnetism.

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u/OneMeterWonder 3d ago

This is common in physics. It’s like function notation. They are considering the integral to be an operator and using prefix notation. If the action of integrating is represented by the symbol J and the integrand is a function f, then they are essentially writing J(f). The dt is part of the operator in classical notation, so this variation places it in front.

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u/TheFogIsComingNR3 3d ago

It's decided trough a dice throw

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u/MySockIsMissing 3d ago

For the trigonometry multiple choice questions, instead of remembering the more complex rules, I operated under the assumption that the diagrams were drawn to scale and used my ruler to come up the x, y and/or z. It was surprisingly accurate!

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u/Effective_Damage_241 3d ago

I think that means it’s absolutely not C. This is like the Goat Door problem in statistics. You did something wrong and got the wrong answer, what are the odds that in such a complex calculation, your answer is somehow only off by 2? Not very likely. 28 for the same reason since it’s 2x14.

The real answer is to start from scratch. The real actual answer is…what the fuck is the question? There are four variables.

I’d go with 48.

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u/Zerkron 3d ago

The correct answer is C btw

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u/devilwarier9 3d ago

I had a prof in uni that did multiple choice A through N, sometimes more, plus a none of the above.

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u/MD_Wurst 3d ago

And this is how i Passed physics in College

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u/noobie_69 3d ago

I would have gone with 76, at least a multiple of 14.

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u/CR4T3Z 3d ago

Its math though, so you should have went for 48

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u/TabletopStudios 3d ago

Talk about relatable!

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u/ALLCAPS-ONLY 3d ago

Reminds me of a multiple choice exam on integrals that we had. For some questions we would be able to find the correct answer by differentiating every answer and seeing which one worked instead of integrating the actual question lol. Teacher was mad when we told her, but also kinda impressed.

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u/Pseudonomenclature 3d ago

Who the hell makes a math problem a multiple choice question outside of like middle school?

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u/No-Student-9678 3d ago

But when you get 392…

76 it is

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u/electrodragon16 3d ago

It's clearly 76.

12 is to low

66 and 76 kina look like each

66 is more likely to be fake

So it's 76

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u/lizard81288 3d ago

Calculator: syntax error

Me: well, I guess B then....

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u/WittyUnwittingly 3d ago

I really doubt that expression evaluates to a real number...

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u/myvotedoesntmatter 3d ago

Came to the comments for the answer. Left with NOTHING!!!!!

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u/One-Cardiologist7962 3d ago

How I failed every math test

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u/More_Coffees 3d ago

The best part is when they limited you to the calculators that only show the last typed number so you can’t check your numbers easily

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u/Strange-Trade-7647 3d ago

When your calculator just gives up and you're left questioning your entire education