Swedish Technology Institute Conducts Math Exam Worthy of Kafka
The customary presumption that problems on a test can be solved proved the undoing of some students in an advanced mathematics course recently at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology. The episode turned an optimization-theory examination into an exercise in existential angst when several of the questions turned out to be insoluble, according to The Local, an online newspaper.
“One thinks as a student that it is you that is wrong and the exam that is correct,” The Local quoted one student, Emelie Baedecke Yllner, as saying. “I was counting away like a madman, but it just wouldn’t work,” she said.
Anders Lindquist, chairman of the institute’s math department, acknowledged today that typographical mistakes — a plus instead of a minus sign in one case, the number 1 instead of the number 2 in another — had rendered three of the examination problems impossible to solve.
He pointed out that the approximately 120 students who took the exam were informed of the errors midway through the five-hour test. But more important, he noted, even in the realm of hard numbers, trying to solve insoluble problems can be worthwhile.
“When you go out in the world, you find lots of problems that don’t have solutions, so even with errors like this, you can still find out what a student knows,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think it is so serious. Students should be able to detect if a problem has a solution. You’re still testing the students.”
Mr. Lindquist, who holds the institute’s chair of optimization theory, hastened to add that “I didn’t write the test and I certainly didn’t read it. It is not my job to check typing errors.”
Students who demonstrated their grasp of the material were credited accordingly when the exam was graded. Those who still failed to make the grade will have an opportunity to take another exam in June. With luck the preparation of the test will this time be fully optimized. —Aisha Labi
news by Chronicle of Higher Education / chronicle.com