Quick Question about Worthless Filthy Cheaters

Lawliet

Tragedy wrote: »

In your opinion.

Everyone already knows it's my opinion by virtue of the fact that I said it, no need to restate the obvious.

partyatmygaff

Lawliet wrote: »

People are really missing my point here.
Worrying about other people's results, begrudging them for doing just as well or better than you, and getting worked up that people are "cheating" on an open book test, that's not going to get you anywhere. Ignoring all that nonsense and doing your best is a lot more productive.

We're all agreed that worrying about cheating on an "open book" test where cheating is rampant and probably already known to lecturers is a bit pointless.

On the other hand, if you want to go on to do a postgrad and absolutely have to stand out as a good candidate, you'd be foolish to not rate yourself relative to the rest of your class. No one said anything about begrudging either, you can be happy that someone did well but still want to do better.

languagenerd

In relation to the OP - forget about it. It'll come back to bite them in the Annual Exams, when everything you've learned from doing them properly will stand to you. It is annoying, in fairness, when someone's getting the same/better marks than you without doing the work, but in any case you have no way of proving it (from what you've said.). Focus on yourself and your own grades, forget everyone else because it's your degree you're getting at the end, not theirs.

In relation to grades being marked on a curve - I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. With essays (and oral exams, in the language subjects), it is easy to see how one essay might look better then it is if surrounded by a lot of exceptionally bad ones, or might look worse if the one before it was exceptionally brilliant - but in exams, there's a marking scheme. They set a bar for exams (and more for each grade), and you have to hit that to pass/get the grade. In one of my subjects, nobody got a First for two years running. Surely if it was graded on a curve, the top however many students would have got one?

Tragedy

Lawliet wrote: »

People are really missing my point here.
Worrying about other people's results, begrudging them for doing just as well or better than you, and getting worked up that people are "cheating" on an open book test, that's not going to get you anywhere. Ignoring all that nonsense and doing your best is a lot more productive.

People aren't missing your point, they're just disagreeing with it. Restating that "competing with others in your class is silly, therefore if they cheat it doesn't matter" isn't going to make people suddenly decide that it's fine for others to cheat.

But by all means, do keep posting that others are silly/immature.

Interferon Gamma

partyatmygaff wrote: »

On the other hand, if you want to go on to do a postgrad and absolutely have to stand out as a good candidate, you'd be foolish to not rate yourself relative to the rest of your class.

You seem to be under the impression that class rank impacts postgraduate applications a lot more than it actually does. (And I say that as someone who's first in their class.)

I'm currently applying for PhDs and any dialogue I've had with staff in Trinity and in the places I'm applying to, have glossed over my ranking in favour of asking about my internship in the US, my volunteer work in labs and my research interests. Prior to this year, I was actually bottom of my class (with a 2.2). So from my own experience I say the personal statement you write is far more important.

Evan93

If ye get back to the heart of the matter & cut out the whole philosophical discussion on the nature of cheating and treat the OP's case individually one has to ask what is the nature of the assignment. Anyone has had experience with mastering physics knows it's a load of nonsense. It reflects the final exam to an extent & if you cheat your way through the online assignments then you'll be weeded out during the actual exam. & to be fair a 1st year online assignment isn't gonna affect in any manner what degree you get, whether it be a 1st or whatever. Cause in fairness the stuff gets harder as you go on and if you cheat consistently then you won't last long with exams and whatever. Yeah cheating is wrong if it costs somebody a scholarship or something but in this case it's a bit silly. & also is the cheating literally copying somebody's answers or a discussion etc. in maths and physics it's quite common that students collaborate on their work and in a very, very strict sense somebody might see that as a cheating. And also, mastering physics, once again, should be taken with a pinch of salt, it's a not so good system that needs to be fixed. So I'd recommend taking a chill pill, relax, don't get so angry at other people and all sorts of other remedies. In the long run it's just dust in the wind.

God of Justice

Okay so here's one of the links that one of the cheaters so kindly referred me to a while back Here , but now that I actually open some of the pdf files it appears that the links are broken (first time I've checked, so it might be a recent (welcome) change).

So either Mr Hegner's finally caught wind of the cheaters or... I've just wasted all your time, sorry! Although it still doesn't explain why yer man would have referred me to this page...

But a cursory google search reveals these tantalising pages Masterphysicssolutions.net and Engineering Hero so I guess those cheaters are just spoiled for choice. Well at least Trinity itself isn't offering the answers.

So yeah in summary, it's not like they're just browsing through their book or searching wikipedia for relevant equations (I mean, even I do that, and it doesn't feel like cheating :P) but they are in fact (or at least, have the ability to) blindly copying down the answers off the web. And that I don't approve of.

And btw, yes, my chief concern is being the best and lording it over others. Sorry.

EDIT: I completely agree that the system is more to blame than the students. But I can't fight the system, man.

Sparticle

This thread is hilarious. I bet you're one of the people who covers their answers and refuses to help others in tutorials.

You're all in this together. I've shared my answers around for MP last year and have gotten methods for reaching answers in return. The entire system is geared towards students helping students.

Here's a hypothetical. Imagine there is a question on finding the distance to a Kuiper Edgeworth object and nobody knows how to do it. One guy figures it out and posts it on the internet. Now everyone knows how to approach the question and due to the random variables has to work through it themselves. They have learned how to do the question. The problem was successful in teaching students about using trigonometry to find astronomical distance.

The same thing is achieved by asking your tutor or lecturer for help. Is that cheating?? **** no.

At the end of the day the student has found out how to do a problem instead of just sitting around twiddling his/her thumbs.

You also learn the material better if you can explain it to others. Help your fellow students OP and stop being THAT GUY/GIRL.

+ It's about 5% IIRC

UnholyGregor

Yeah god of justice, I agree totally, what right do those bastards have to put in their own time and effort into seeing other approaches to questions that they may have been struggling with. I mean especially on a website like mastering physics, where the variables have been randomized so "cheating" is technically not viable. God who knows, if people like you weren't around to arbitrate such injustices, god knows what might become of the course, someday the depraved bastards might even stoop to the depths of using those "cheating tomes" I've heard about in the library.

Your name is more apt than you probably intended, you arrogant, self righteous, academically insecure, fag muffin.