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mathematics

Cheating was never easier…

The quizzes at the German online news magazine site Spiegel Online never made it hard to cheat, you can simply go back in the browser, you even are encouraged to do so especially since they usually don’t mention the correct answers after clicking the wrong ones.

The current geometry quiz now even contains (alongside more challenging ones) questions like “Can you split this [displayed] figure into four congruent areas?” with the answer options

  • Yes, sure, I know how to do that.
  • No, I don’t manage it.
  • I think that’s impossible.

:loll: Sure, how would they let us draw solutions…? Anyway, even here, if you select a No answer, you just get encouraging tips, the solution is only explained in detail at the Yes answer – so, many will be able to read at the end: “You scored 14 out of 14 points.”

While that may not be bad with regard to knowledge transfer – especially for a mathematical quiz –, encouraging people to think and all – anyway, the SpOn quiz system needs to be revised somehow…

Or does anyone believe me now that I really got every question right, some of which, admittedly, with educated guesses?

Cuddle song hampers percentages – or something like that…

Not that I wouldn’t like my low-price cellphone provider blau.de (=“blue”), on the contrary – but if you combine and build upon what’s in their latest newsletter I received today, this post’s title may be the result: ;)

Main news item is the price reduction from 9.9 to 9 cents per voice minute and SMS, presented by their two blue sock hand puppets (my translation): “From April 1 on, I pay only 9 cents per minute and SMS in the general tariff.” – “Great, then you save even more, a full 10 percent!

Well, they got it wrong: You save 0.9 cents, that’s 0.9 / 9.9 = 1 / 11 = 0.090909… ≈ 9.1 %. So rather nearly 10 %. :klugscheisser:

Items 2 and 3 in the newsletter are the accessories tip of a UMTS PC card and the WAP tip “Google to go” – and then the ringsound download tip for this unspeakable, unbearable, unfeasible, un–whatever Schnuffel Kuschel-Song (“cuddle song”), number 1 for weeks in the official German single charts. “Get the spring hit on your cellphone”. Aaaaargh!
:blossnicht:

Quote (translated) from Schnuffel: Germany in cuddling fever (laut.de, German) (via 49 Suns)

“Number one for a virtual cuddly toy singing about a carrot. Of course, it can’t get more moronic, but we also thought that about the Crazy Frog. […] The song itself (music & text: Jamba) is a cheap large-hall disco stomper with a text you usually find on fall-asleep CDs babies. But that’s okay, since Jamba is a company that makes money out of bullshit. And it’s legitimate because people buy that bullshit. And Jamba doesn’t claim it were art, let alone music.”

Nichts besseres zu bloggen?

Dann gib damit an, alle Fragen richtig— weise auf ein Quiz hin, z.B. das (zum Jahr der Mathematik passende) „Große Rechen-Rätsel“ von Spiegel Online (Artikel dazu) mit 15 Fragen – drei zu vervollständigende Zahlenreihen, ansonsten kleine Rechenaufgaben.

Also viel Spaß – und nicht schwindeln (was bei SpOn-Quizzes leider viel zu einfach ist…)! :mrgreen:

Links of the Week (2008/11)

Short and sweet:

Happy Pi Day!

Pi 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648…

Today is Pi Day – thanks to the American notation of 3/14 for today’s date. :) Also it’s Albert Einstein‘s birthday, he would be 129 years old today.

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