Cheating on math tests
My parents gave me a Commodore 64 for Christmas during my junior year in high school (yes, that dates me a little). I had already been using a Vic-20 so BASIC programming was already a big part of my life. With the Commodore 64, I had a tape drive and could store my programs instead of typing them in from scratch every time, so the size and complexity of my programs really took off.
One of my high school courses was trigonometry. I had always done reasonably well in math classes but I had never really enjoyed it like I had English or science. I just wanted to get the homework done, pass the tests and move on. So I began cheating.
When Mr. Ford would give us a homework assignment, I’d dash home and begin writing a BASIC program that would solve the different math problems in the assignment. I’d verify the answers, write them down, then turn in the assignment the next day. I was getting 100% on my homework, but I was flunking the tests. Mr. Ford pulled me aside after class to talk with me about it.
I immediately confessed what I was doing and Mr. Ford’s reaction surprised me. He owned a Commodore 64 as well and had been dabbling in BASIC programming too, so he gave me a choice. I could either stop using my computer to do my homework and complete it and the tests the old-fashioned way, or I could continue as I was but with one difference…
When Mr. Ford had an in-class test, I had the option to write a BASIC program on paper that would solve the problems. He would take my test home and enter it into his C-64 and if it ran without bugs and actually solved the problems in the test he’d give me a 100% score. If it had bugs but still solved the problems I’d get a C. If it failed to solve one or more problems, I’d get an F. I also had to turn in the programs I’d write to solve the homework assignments with the same criteria.
I chose to write the programs during tests and ended up getting an A in the class.
Mr. Ford recognized that in order to write a software program that accurately mimics reality, the programmer would have to obtain a mastery of the reality itself. The way my brain works may be somewhat unusual … I would intensely dive into the math problems so I could write a BASIC program to solve them, learning them inside and out. But once I knew that my program worked and worked consistently, I’d purge the knowledge out of my head and move onto something else. Once you build a tool to do your work for you, you stop doing the work yourself.
Fortunately my teacher was able to see that I was actually doing twice as much work as the other students. I was learning the math and was writing computer software, too. It would be the same as an English Composition teacher asking her students to write a 5-page essay on Shakespeare’s use of metaphors, and then translating that essay into French.
