Hacker News Reader

Interesting - either someone thinks it's good for an authority to encourage people to do things against the rules in order to catch and punish them, or else someone never picked up on suggestive question phrasing in school.

"So, the professor deliberately tempted people to look up something online, then amused himself by busting the people who did. Cute method, but it proves nothing other than "schmuck bait works"."

The way I see it, the people that are actually doing their homework wouldn't even be tempted by it..because they are actually doing their homework.

"Remember that this is homework, not a test. Yes, presumably the problem is doable without any reference material. The students don't necessarily know that, though. They do know that they've been prodded in that question to at least check their thinking or work against external information....which isn't available to them through the channels they've been permitted to use."

Checking your work against the correct answer and Googling the answer (and just writing it down) are two different things.

Thank you - this is the most vapid thing I've seen today not written by a TSA official.

Especially:

"Checking your work against the correct answer and Googling the answer (and just writing it down) are two different things."

And you can tell the difference based on a server log...exactly how?

"Thank you - this is the most vapid thing I've seen today not written by a TSA official."

Are you here all week? Do you always get this many laughs?

"And you can tell the difference based on a server log...exactly how?"

If you can't see that googling answers isn't cheating, I'm sorry.

I don't know if it even qualifies as "schmuck bait." The Prof's actions are ethically objectionable (and personally disgusting to me) since he actively solicited unethical behavior from gullible students. Frankly, it's not a challenge to bring out the worst qualities in people, especially scared undergrads.

Looks like you guys didn't read the whole story. The professor specifically asked the class not to search online. The goal of the homework was to get the students to teach them to think through the puzzle.

Looks like you didn't actually read what I wrote - well done.

ETA: Or, charitably, you didn't recognize that the big UPDATES at the top of the blogger's post indicate that since my original post, he thought to clarify the context and indicate that he'd actually misremembered the phrasing of the question.

Or maybe both?

I wouldn't consider the actual professor's question from the linked exam to be entrapment, as it happens. That in mind, I'll save my disgust for the people who thought the scenario of entrapment originally described was so terribly clever.