Monday, June 25, 2012

Is it just me, or is this baffling?




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

20 comments:

drjim said...

That's most definitely a "Say WHAT???" type of question.
Was this on one of your tests for school??

Ambulance Driver said...

Please tell me that no tenured university professor came up with such asinine, bullshit questions.

PLEASE tell me.

Matt G said...

None of those answers make any sense to a person who thinks in a normal, rational manner.

phlegmfatale said...

drjim - Yes. This was on a quiz in the online program that accompanies the text, and then the question was on the unit exam yesterday. There have been many WTF questions therein, but this one stood out so singularly that I had to document it.

Ambulance Driver - Oh, how I wish I could tell you that I made it up. I think it was composed by the author of the textbook, so the professor is ultimately responsible for her poor choice of textbooks.

Matt G - I agree. I am looking forward to having this class behind me so I can stop rolling my eyes so frequently.

Leslie Sapp said...

My daughter just graduated from high school and has been taking online college courses for the last couple of years. This is typical of the type of questions I've seen in much of the course material.

Anonymous said...

A question like that could drive someone to drink if they think about it long enough. Hang in there you are almost done with this class and then you can put it behind you and laugh about it someday.

- Mrs. Tole

Dirk said...

Be sure to let us know when you can actually see out the back side of your head. :) "Baffling" is being kind. There's simply not enough information in the statement to make any kind of logical deduction about the subject of the question. And the second question is 100% personal opinion, and will be influenced by ones background, etc.

In fact, taking both questions together, it looks more like the test is designed to see where you fall on some political/sociological spectrum - more like a survey about you than an actual "test".

Wayne said...

"If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college..."

That question will be the reason they will find me dead on the bathroom floor in a week with a massive embolism in my brain. Thanks Sweetie.

ZerCool said...

Hang on, let me consult my DSM! ...

...

I got nothing. Good grief.

Julie said...

i can't think of a more suitable word so i'm going with 'baffling' too ...

Anonymous said...

ok I have to ask what is the answer they want you to give?

it ends up becoming a quest for the PC answer not a correct answer...

B

Kristophr said...

Yep.

Some "professor" wants students to select the most politically correct answer.

I would guess that the politically correct retard who wrote the question would think that the second answer was "correct".

gamachinist said...

Is there a "correct" answer to that?
I wonder if it was it written by someone who speaks English fluently?

Auntie J said...

That's about like this ecard I saw about math word problems...

http://www.absolutelymadness.net/2012/05/18/41402/

Sigivald said...

My suspicion is that those answers are meant for a different question (ie, that the question got rewritten and the answers weren't, or vice-versa).

Or, relatedly, that the question originally contained more information that would make the answers meaningful and one of them The Correct One, but that information was lost in an edit or failure.

Because the answers are a coherent enough set in themselves, and one can see that there might be a question that could exist that would use them appropriately.

The question they're attached to just isn't that question.

Bonnie said...

Yeah, I'm going with the second answer, as well. It can be surmised that Meredith is lower-class because she can't afford adequate care, and tranquilizers are NOT adequate care for mental illness - they're a cheap stop-gap to keep people from hurting themselves (personal experience, much?).

HerrBGone said...

Perhaps the question is so inane because of the professor's hidden agenda: Driving students mad with unanswerable questions as a marketing technique so his own private practice may pick up a few patients from among his students.

Jess said...

The actual correct answer is "Purple". Shame on the authors of the textbook for their error.

TOTWTYTR said...

Anoymous is correct. They are looking for you to extrapolate the PC answer.

Squeaky Wheel is also right. The extrapolated answer is that the system is doping Meredith up as a low cost alternative to giving her more expensive psychotropic medications.

Unfortunately, neither answer will help Meredith, because in the real world no one really knows how to treat mental illness.

Which is the saddest thing of all.

Hunter said...

Hmmm. 42. Yes that is the answer, 42.