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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Missing the obvious

So I write a midterm.  Being diligent, I work out all the problems today at lunch and have a complete, thorough answer key.  There are 40 questions, which seems about right since some of them require some calculation using statistical software.

So, 20 minutes into the test, one student notices that the questions are numbered 1-15 and then 1-40.  I'd used the automatic numbering function in Microsoft Word -- and once again it led me to a bad end.  The midterm was actually 55 questions.

What to do? Seek expert advice from Beth, who as a 6th grade teacher gives a lot of tests and is used to working in timed blocks.  Then chop 10 questions off the end.

Exactly how I worked through all these without noticing the renumbering, I have no idea. It's like those videos where people don't notice the gorilla running across the screen.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous8:31 AM

    Am I missing something as well? Wouldn't you need to chop 15 questions off to get back to the targeted 40?

    ReplyDelete