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This is not about rigorous statistics, it's about human nature. In the sixth grade, my math teacher offered a test at the beginning of the year that included quite a lot of complicated instructions. The last instruction told students to ignore all the previous instructions, and just write their name at the top of the paper and turn it in.

Guess how well the typical top scorers in the class did on this one.



That prank is horrible because the document is self-contradictory yet assumes a single correct interpretation, unless the document is very carefully written and formatted using an agreed semantics.

A well-written document would be a great illustration of Haskell-style lazy evaluation, though


I actually got that test in middle school. (I presume my teacher read about it and thought it was a cool idea.)

The one I got was very explicit: Read the entire test first, and only after you've read all the questions and instructions are you to begin work.

Let's just say that I failed and I was pissed about it, without any particularly good basis or justification, other than being 12-ish years old.




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