Comment On A Perfect Score

I wish my exams were graded like that.

I've had tests where such a result would be reasonable. Here's 6 problems, answer any 5.

A screen bit-depth of 520 bits? Holy smoking donkeys! I need an upgrade for my eyes so I can perceive that...

Hopefully that first wasn't on a math test.

Goes from barely visible to "You'll need a welder's helmet to view it safely". Nice.

The image on the left side of the first one looks bad, too. The words aren't on the right angle!

Joel must have been graded on a curve...

For those about to give an answer about adjusting results based on how many people got particular scores...

Only the resultant grade is adjusted (A, B, C, etc for high-school/college work [english college = american something else]). The actual numerical percentage mark itself stands as it would be frankly ridiculous to adjust that. Again, what is adjusted is the lookup table for which score results in which grade.

Thank you and good night =P

Kemp:

...english college = american something else...

What does "college" mean in England, then?

Kemp:

The actual numerical percentage mark itself stands as it would be frankly ridiculous to adjust that.

Yes it's ridiculous, but I have seen numerical percentage marks adjusted as part of a so-called curve. The usual method is to give enough extra credit points to everyone such that the highest score is 100%. Stupid, but I have seen this many times. This earns the top scorer a severe beating after school hours.

Oh, and I'll tell the obvious joke since no one has done so yet. 100% must be an A+. Har har.

Loren Pechtel:

I've had tests where such a result would be reasonable. Here's 6 problems, answer any 5.

Wouldn't it be graded out of 5, then?

What does "college" mean in England, then?

For 13-18 year olds, I think Americans use college to mean higher education (University level)?

Jon:

What does "college" mean in England, then?

For 13-18 year olds, I think Americans use college to mean higher education (University level)?

Yes we do. We call England college high school.

Jon:

What does "college" mean in England, then?

For 13-18 year olds, I think Americans use college to mean higher education (University level)?

Not always. See the collegiate system of Oxford university (or even Cambridge). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_of_the_University_of_Oxford

probably printed a zero-based index variable

Jon:

What does "college" mean in England, then?

For 13-18 year olds, I think Americans use college to mean higher education (University level)?

Yeah, although there is (usually) a difference between a college and a university in the States. A college is usually a smaller institution that offers a limited range of programs, somewhat like what I gather is sometimes called a "university college" in the UK. A university is larger and (sometimes) comprises a number of "colleges", much like Oxford does.

These aren't really technical terms, though, and it's common to say "going to college" or "being at college" in reference to any higher-learning institution.

dkf:

A screen bit-depth of 520 bits? Holy smoking donkeys! I need an upgrade for my eyes so I can perceive that...

Make sure the upgrade includes tetrachromacy, for 520 is not divisible by 3.

Loren Pechtel:

Here's 6 problems, answer any 5.

Another possible explanation is that one question had a weight factor of 0. Though that makes me wonder why it was posed at all.

A University is a group of colleges connected with plumbing.

Someone You Know:

Jon:

What does "college" mean in England, then?

For 13-18 year olds, I think Americans use college to mean higher education (University level)?

Yeah, although there is (usually) a difference between a college and a university in the States. A college is usually a smaller institution that offers a limited range of programs, somewhat like what I gather is sometimes called a "university college" in the UK. A university is larger and (sometimes) comprises a number of "colleges", much like Oxford does.

These aren't really technical terms, though, and it's common to say "going to college" or "being at college" in reference to any higher-learning institution.

In Canada the difference is more distinct. You go to university to get a degree, you go to college to get a diploma. College is more job-skill-training-career based (e.g. skilled trades), while one goes to university to learn something more theoretical (e.g. physics).

So that was a test made by Joel, on software

Aren't I clever...

From what I've noticed:
In the US, Colleges focus on providing a bachelor's degree.
Universities can provide a full engineering / doctor's degree.

Because universities tend to cost a lot more and the programs between colleges and universities have some overlap, people tend to take a lot of the courses in college and later switch to university, when the college is no longer available to 'tender to their needs'.

Students then take a big chunk of their classes 'transfer credit' with them to university, so they don't have to those classes again.

The Netherlands also has a similar system of Higher Technical Education (college) and full universities.
Technical schools focus on the practical side of things, whilst universities focus on the theoretical side of things.

It is also usually possible to 'upgrade' your degree by doing technical school first and then moving on to a 'fast-track' education at a university.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that College in the US has about the same level as high school in the NL and tends to end where college in the Netherlands starts.
The level of education simply seems a bit higher for the same collegiate degree.


(Yes, I have done High School in the NL, college in the US, got bored (25 credit hours away from a degree) and did college in the NL.

Kitgerrits:

From what I've noticed:
In the US, Colleges focus on providing a bachelor's degree.
Universities can provide a full engineering / doctor's degree.

Because universities tend to cost a lot more and the programs between colleges and universities have some overlap, people tend to take a lot of the courses in college and later switch to university, when the college is no longer available to 'tender to their needs'.

Students then take a big chunk of their classes 'transfer credit' with them to university, so they don't have to those classes again.

What you're talking about is common in the U.S., but it is not a formal standard. There's also the issue that there are many schools in the U.S. that are functionally universities but refer to themselves as colleges (e.g., Dartmouth College). The reverse is probably also true, but I can't think of any examples at the moment.

Jon:

What does "college" mean in England, then?

For 13-18 year olds, I think Americans use college to mean higher education (University level)?

make that 16-18

Primary 5-11
Secondary 11-16
College / Sixth Form 16-18
University 18+

The ages are not exact, It depends on the position of your birthday in the school year.

AdT:

dkf:

A screen bit-depth of 520 bits? Holy smoking donkeys! I need an upgrade for my eyes so I can perceive that...

Make sure the upgrade includes tetrachromacy, for 520 is not divisible by 3.

So is 32-bits. That doesn't mean there's no advantage to align it on 4 bytes (and, in this case, on 65-bytes :P).

VisualD:

make that 16-18

Primary 5-11
Secondary 11-16
College / Sixth Form 16-18
University 18+

The ages are not exact, It depends on the position of your birthday in the school year.

For mine (Cheltenham College) it was 13-18, looking on Wikipedia it seems independents have different ages to the rest of the system. I hadn't realised that before, I had strong powers of observation as a kid obviously :)

For posing the "0 point" question, sometimes you throw out one, but not often with that few. Maybe the instructor didn't want to have to deal with 1/6ths and wanted simple maths?

dkf:

A screen bit-depth of 520 bits? Holy smoking donkeys! I need an upgrade for my eyes so I can perceive that...

I take it you aren't a tetra-chromat (four distinct pigments in your cones instead of just three).

See http://www.cs.utk.edu/~evers/documents/tetraChromat.txt.

Someone You Know:

Kitgerrits:

From what I've noticed:
In the US, Colleges focus on providing a bachelor's degree.
Universities can provide a full engineering / doctor's degree.

Because universities tend to cost a lot more and the programs between colleges and universities have some overlap, people tend to take a lot of the courses in college and later switch to university, when the college is no longer available to 'tender to their needs'.

Students then take a big chunk of their classes 'transfer credit' with them to university, so they don't have to those classes again.

What you're talking about is common in the U.S., but it is not a formal standard. There's also the issue that there are many schools in the U.S. that are functionally universities but refer to themselves as colleges (e.g., Dartmouth College). The reverse is probably also true, but I can't think of any examples at the moment.

I've been told that Oklahoma Panhandle State Univesity in Goodwell, Oklahoma could offer advanced degrees, but choose not to do so.

Pol:

So is 32-bits.

On most computers, a 32-bit display doesn't carry 32 bits of color data. They are usually 24-bit displays, with the remaining 8 bits used for depth (Z-buffer).

VisualD:

make that 16-18

Primary 5-11
Secondary 11-16
College / Sixth Form 16-18
University 18+

The ages are not exact, It depends on the position of your birthday in the school year.

In New Zealand, it is typically:

Primary: 5 to 10
Intermediate: 11 and 12
College (including sixth form and bursary): 13 to 18
University: 18+

However in New Zealand, it is only compulsory to attend a qualified school of any kind, including correspondence, up to the age of 16, after which you can drop out legally and become a bum.

That sporting cliche of giving a more than 100% effort can be possible with the first application.

David C.:

On most computers, a 32-bit display doesn't carry 32 bits of color data. They are usually 24-bit displays, with the remaining 8 bits used for depth (Z-buffer).

The benefit of having 32-bit display is that each pixel is already aligned in memory (in a 32-bit OS), thus increasing performance. 16-bit pixels are also aligned to a degree. The individual red, green and blue components cannot be referenced individually without some shifting and re-alignment.

24-bit displays are not aligned in memory. You can access the individual red, green and blue components separately but you cannot get the entire pixel at once with just one memory read operation, you must perform extra tasks to strip and shift the pixel data appropriately.

The 8-bit padding on 32-bit allows the best flexibility and performance when reading or writing to the pixel array. A typical 32-bit computer reads memory 32-bits at a time, so 32-bit displays are the most efficient, even if they require a lot of memory.

David C.:

On most computers, a 32-bit display doesn't carry 32 bits of color data. They are usually 24-bit displays, with the remaining 8 bits used for depth (Z-buffer).

Does that mean that pixels can jump out of my LCD screen and poke my eyes out? hehe

Kitgerrits:

...(Yes, I have done High School in the NL, college in the US, got bored (25 credit hours away from a degree) and did college in the NL.

I have done pretty much the same thing (except with US/Switzerland) and have come to the same conclusion. The naming of upper level (higher) education is confusing.

David C.:

Pol:

So is 32-bits.

On most computers, a 32-bit display doesn't carry 32 bits of color data. They are usually 24-bit displays, with the remaining 8 bits used for depth (Z-buffer).

Isn't the 4th byte the alpha channel? ARGB each 1 byte

I was under the impression that the last 8-bits was for the alpha (transparency) bits?

David G:

However in New Zealand, it is only compulsory to attend a qualified school of any kind, including correspondence, up to the age of 16, after which you can drop out legally and become a bum.

Also true in the U.S., although I believe it's 17 in some states. Happens more often than it should.

Kemp:

Only the resultant grade is adjusted (A, B, C, etc for high-school/college work [english college = american something else]). The actual numerical percentage mark itself stands as it would be frankly ridiculous to adjust that. Again, what is adjusted is the lookup table for which score results in which grade.

Grading curves are ridiculous anyway. Why is student X's crappy work acceptable just because everyone else turned in crappy work, too?

On some certification exams (FAA for example), they will include test (as in beta) questions which do not count against you if you get them wrong. They use this try out new questions before adding them to the question list.

Of course that doesn't explain the example which appears to be from test prep software.

Justin Haygood:

I was under the impression that the last 8-bits was for the alpha (transparency) bits?

Sure, why not? It's more likely to be correct than as a z-buffer.

The extra 8 bits are padding. Without specifying what is in 32-bit mode, it's impossible to really give any answer.

However, the screenshot seems to suggest that it's the display mode, and for the actual display memory, the extra 8 bits are useless and just ignored.

For texture memory, then yes, the extra 8 bits are frequently used as an alpha channel.

Note that as far as I know, nothing uses an 8-bit Z-buffer. Someone might find some really old system that did, but I can't imagine a system both old enough to use only 8 bits for a Z-buffer and new enough to support 24-bit color.

I haven't done enough graphics programming recently to know what modern hardware uses, but I expect any recent graphic cards would use (or more accurately support) a 32-bit Z-buffer that's effectively completely separate from the display buffer.

Also, note that 16-bit also isn't evenly divisible by 3. Usually the extra bit is either assigned to the green channel, giving it an extra 32 values, or is used as a single-bit alpha channel.

SuperousOxide:

Grading curves are ridiculous anyway. Why is student X's crappy work acceptable just because everyone else turned in crappy work, too?

I've been in undergraduate classes where the professor has purposefully taught at a graduate school level, then applied a curve. It isn't that the majority of the students are turning in crappy work, it's that the majority of the students don't have what it takes to earn a PhD in the subject.

AdT:

Make sure the upgrade includes tetrachromacy, for 520 is not divisible by 3.

Who said anything about needing to have the same number of bits per channel? It's a well-known fact that the human eye is more sensitive to changes in green than to red, and its sensitivity to blue is even less than either of them.

Justin Haygood:

I was under the impression that the last 8-bits was for the alpha (transparency) bits?

Not when you're targeting "solid" drawing surfaces like a computer screen. Ultimately, even if windows you're drawing into themselves have alpha channels, the desktop plane is solid; you don't see through to the things behind the monitor front. (Nor would you want to; most modern monitors are LCD displays, and all they have behind them is a bright light.)

The alpha transparency in a RGBA pixel is used to combine two images on the same screen so that you can see both at the same time. EX. partially transparent windows.

That explains why there aren't any agricultural universities. It's really, really hard to teach cows to flush the toilet.

no longer a student:

I've been in undergraduate classes where the professor has purposefully taught at a graduate school level, then applied a curve. It isn't that the majority of the students are turning in crappy work, it's that the majority of the students don't have what it takes to earn a PhD in the subject.

But apparently the prof doesn't know how to tell the difference. There's nothing wrong with saying 50%+ is an A. But using a curve to determine that is stupid. He should know how much of the material is necessary to know for the ungrads, and base the "curve" on that. (I guess I mean to clarify that I only object to "Top student gets the A" or "10% of students get A, 30% B, etc" style curves)

In this case, I'd say the professor was just too lazy to make appropriate lesson plans and tests for his audience and just used what he taught to the graduate students.

SuperousOxide:

But apparently the prof doesn't know how to tell the difference. There's nothing wrong with saying 50%+ is an A. But using a curve to determine that is stupid. He should know how much of the material is necessary to know for the ungrads, and base the "curve" on that. (I guess I mean to clarify that I only object to "Top student gets the A" or "10% of students get A, 30% B, etc" style curves)

In this case, I'd say the professor was just too lazy to make appropriate lesson plans and tests for his audience and just used what he taught to the graduate students.

Professors often don't teach low level classes (especially undergrad ones) on a regular basis and often change the material between teaching the classes. These changes may include new problems, new topics and so on. The quality of TAs also varies from year to year and may affect the average grade of students. The curriculum as a whole also shifts with time and the type of student taking a particular class, their prior knowledge and what they are expected to learn also changes as a result.

AdT:

Another possible explanation is that one question had a weight factor of 0. Though that makes me wonder why it was posed at all.

Question 1: What is your name?
Get it right, no points. Get it wrong, severe electrical shock.

did everyone miss the 15-bit colour? Is it just me or is that a very strange value...