Comment by biot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biot | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

[Edit: my comment was in reply to a sentence in the parent comment which has since been removed.]

There's nothing they "got away with".

  “In my courses, all grades are relative to the highest actually
   achieved score. Thus, if no one showed up and everyone got 0
   percent, everyone would be marked as 100 percent,” Froehlich
   wrote.

The students took advantage of a stated policy and received the promised result of that policy. It's game theory, and they played by the game's rules fair and square.

Yes, but it does seem like the students were cheeky and got away with it. They played the game according to the rules, but there is the issue of gentlemanly conduct.

I think the question hinges on whether or not it was an intended consequence. The professor said:

  “I had decided that I am sticking to my policy, they had
   decided to boycott the exam, and that was pretty much it,”
   Froelich wrote. “The students learned that by coming
   together, they can achieve something that individually they
   could never have done.”

This seems to indicate he approves. Though now that the previously theoretical concept has been proven, he has changed the rules so that if everyone gets 0 points, then everyone ends up with 0 percent too.

I got the impression that the professor had anticipated this as a possible outcome, and was intentionally challenging the students to overcome the coordination problem, as he didn't think they'd be able.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com