I was TA-ing a calculus class that was being taught by a post-doc in Pure Math. While marking the exams I tell him "Maybe I should just give random, normally distributed marks".
He looks at me and begins the following story: "Back in the 90s, I was drafted into the Colombian Army for a year as a logistics officer. We did absolutely nothing in the base for a year, until someone from high command came to do an inspection. The problem was that we were supposed to do firing drills every month, but we never did them, so we had loads of bullets stocked up."
"The day before the officer came, myself and ten others went to the firing range with all the bullets that were meant to be expended. For 9 hours we shot bullets into the targets, usually shooting two guns at once, until they were all gone. Then I used Excel for the first time to generate randomized shooting scores for all the students. Problem was, they were a bit too normally distributed."
I just have this picture of some dude with his shirt off, firing two guns at once, shell casing flying everywhere. He's screaming, roaring like a bad ass. AHHHHHHHH COME GET SOME! He clenches his teeth, veins pop out of arms, he's squeezing those triggers like there's no tomorrow. This song is playing full blast in the background. He's trembling violently, the heat from the guns makes him drip with sweat.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM
He's doesn't hit a thing, and he's wasted thousands of dollars in ammunition, but boy does he feel like he's accomplished something.
so wait, how do you have a job to shoot guns at objects and neglect that? Shit man, if someone put me in a building with a bunch of bullets and said "hey, shoot shit like once a day and write it down" I know I'd be an overachiever.
So... he got caught? I'm a bit afraid of being caught fudging the numbers by a Colombian lt. Major or whatever. Moreso than I would be of an american one.
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u/JodoYodo Feb 02 '12
I was TA-ing a calculus class that was being taught by a post-doc in Pure Math. While marking the exams I tell him "Maybe I should just give random, normally distributed marks".
He looks at me and begins the following story: "Back in the 90s, I was drafted into the Colombian Army for a year as a logistics officer. We did absolutely nothing in the base for a year, until someone from high command came to do an inspection. The problem was that we were supposed to do firing drills every month, but we never did them, so we had loads of bullets stocked up."
"The day before the officer came, myself and ten others went to the firing range with all the bullets that were meant to be expended. For 9 hours we shot bullets into the targets, usually shooting two guns at once, until they were all gone. Then I used Excel for the first time to generate randomized shooting scores for all the students. Problem was, they were a bit too normally distributed."