Too Close to Home

This PhD Comics hits way too close to him. The fact is that it's just true, and that makes me sad (although it also makes the comic strip good).

When I was TAing Math 1 at Tech and Wilson was teaching it, he had a great trick that I have occasionally adopted: Let's say that there is a problem on the midterm (or first midterm, if there is more than one) that befuddles lots of people. Put the exact same problem (word for word, number for number, symbol for symbol) on the next exam and see what happens. Keep iterating until people get it. We did this with a problem in Math 1 that year. The same person graded it on both exams, and somehow the average point total was lower the second time it appeared than it was the first. Oy vey.

(Tip of the cap to Ravi Montenegro.)