Johns Hopkins Computer Science prof Professor Peter Fröhlich grades his
students on a curve: the highest score on the final gets an A and
everyone else is graded accordingly.
Clever students in Fröhlich’s “Intermediate Programming”, “Computer
System Fundamentals,” and “Introduction to Programming for Scientists
and Engineers” figured out that this meant that if they all boycotted
the exam, they’d all get As.
So they organized a boycott, milling around the hall outside the class
where the exams were being sat, sternly reminding each other that if no
one sat the exam they’d all get straight As, ignoring Fröhlich’s pleas
to come and sit the exam.
Fröhlich praised his students’ solidarity: “The students learned that by
coming together, they can achieve something that individually they
could never have done. At a school that is known (perhaps unjustly) for
competitiveness I didn’t expect that reaching such an agreement was
possible.”
This one time I was at a street festival hosted by my Uni and there was a guy doing card tricks. I was watching him when I noticed he dropped a card. (7 of spades) I quickly pu my shoe in it and then bent down to act like I was tying my shoe. He then asks for a volunteer so I raise my hand. He asks me to say the name of a card at random so I say “7 of spades” he does his trick that I guess was supposed to make it come on top. He holds up the Ace of Hearts and says “is this your card?” And I hold up the card and said “no but this is” and the crowd LOST IT. I handed the card back to the magician and walked away. Later he comes up to me and asks me how I did it. I looked him in the eye, smiled and said “magicians never reveal their secrets” and walked away.
