Tue, 03 Jan 2006
Scanned numbers
I have implemented a program for recognizing scanned forms, which can be used in IS MU (our information system) to recongnize and evaluate the exam forms. It seems some students are too stupid to read the instructions and fill in the form in an appropriate way:
... or this one:
Interestingly enough, my program, even though it is not designed to recognize a hand-written text, did recognize the digit "3" in the image above. However, it is sad that university students are too dumb to fill the form according to the instructions.
5 replies for this story:
Honza Holčapek wrote: You're right, it's sad. But not only this.
I've recalled my P003 (RDBMS architecture) exam. The classroom was crowded, therefore there was no room for every student to sit separated from both sides. So the teacher decided in run-time to split all the students to three distinct groups. Students was to determine their group by simple formula: group = UCO % 3. Some students complained they didn't know their UCO. And some others didn't know, what "modulo" is. Ooops.
Yenya wrote:
Well, today's exam was a bit of extreme - we purposedly did not say anything to students, just the instructions on the answer form itself. We wanted to see whether the instructions are clear enough. According to my experience, when the teacher actually draws the 7-segment digit box on the whiteboard just before the exam, and explains that the digits are to be written as in the display between the outer- and inner marks, we get much better results. Tomorrow there will be an exam with this answer forms at the Faculty of social studies, so we will see if their students can be even worse than students of informatics.
mornfall wrote: could not resist...
s/dumb enough/too dumb/ And no, i still don't know my own UCO by heart :-).
Yenya wrote:
Fixed, thanks! One of the reasons I write this blog is to improve my English ...
himdel wrote: another view
Well, isn't it the sole purpose of a user's existence to push the software to it's limits and beyond? I think that by filling the form the way they do, they give you two choices. Either you (or somebody) can do the recognition "by hand" or (if you're the right kind of lazy) you can take it as a motivation to upgrade the software. :)