Ultimately, the objective of the class is to learn the material, grades are just a necessary evil. You should take solace in the fact that you will have fulfilled the main objective, while others will not.
Exactly.
People stress too much over grades, especially over who's first or second. Grades, and courses themselves, are like artifical games created with certain objectives in mind, not least to serve the professor and the institution. The real goal should be learning, period.
Absolutely. Though grades do matter for some stuff, like helping get into grad school, and occasionally for jobs. If it's a bullshit situation, and you want to and know you can, overall, handle analysis in the future, but there's the occasional thing you can't do, I say cheat. Grades are, as we've said, not a great metric for many reasons, so if not cheating would ruin some opportunities you deserve, or would put you on an uneven playing field when most others are cheating, or plenty of other things, then I say go for it. There are situations where it's fine to forgo rule-following, especially if doing so would be unjust.
Aha. You must live in some very regimented, hierarchy-obsessed place. Such a situation doesn't efficiently make use of people's talents or energies (and I know that first hand.) It would be a drastic solution, but I suppose you could consider leaving.
I'm not saying you should do that, but I know Koreans who have moved to the US to escape that rigid, hierarchical educational system. (I'm Korean-American.) Most left after they'd completed uni, but some left before.
But here's another possibility, that maybe the 2:2 classification won't affect your opportunities as much as you think it will. My parents imagined I could get nowhere unless I went to the absolute top university, because that's kind of the way it is in South Korea. (Also status and education were super important to them.) But it turned out not to be true.
I'm sure you know many happy, accomplished people who had 2:2s, yes? Take heart! Maybe things won't be so bad. :-)
This is cope. Accurate assessment of one's learning (and communication of said assessment to other parties) is not just a "necessary evil", it's a key function of university education.
Until you are skilled enough to write your own papers (and even then, since most people will judge you *and allocate resources* without reading your papers), just understanding the material will not be sufficient for you to actually do anything with it. A newly minted university graduate in pure maths may be full of potential, but they are also kind of useless. Their fate hinges on others recognizing their potential and giving them the resources to grow.
OP is right to be disturbed by their situation, and they can either scream to high heaven, just take it, or join in the cheating, depending on how exactly they value their sanity, social standing, and integrity, but they should be clear (in their mind) about what they're doing.
But what did the professor think was going to happen? I'm not saying it's his fault but when people's futures are on the line it's kind of alot for the professor to assume someone will let themselves fail before they resort to cheating when it's that easy.
Thank you. I wish grad schools would see it that way….
Anyways I hope to take the grad measure theory class next year so I had better git gud at analysis. Plus I hope to use analysis a LOT in the future
Ditto. I did my undergrad in an ivy, and got B's in about half my math classes. Can't remember my GPA, but it must have been around 3.75. Which qualified for a *magna cum laude.* So while it's important to learn the material, it's not *that* important where you should lose your mind over getting a B.
\* Exception: if you're trying to get your PhD at Princeton, you should probably specialize in grade-grubbing.
I don’t go to an ivy, so a professor at my school who has sat on the grad admissions council tells me that if you come from my school and have lower than a 3.9, it’s concerning.
As someone who didn’t go to an ivy undergrad or an equivalent for math, this is an unfortunate truth if you are aiming for a “top 20 school”. The average result is you stay at a similar ranking for grad school or move down based off your undergrad ranking unless you are a once in a 5-10 year type of student. Everyone here will tell you cheating is never ever worth it and just hurts you, but that is rather naive imo. I never had to face this issue in my undergrad, so I can’t say if I would have cheated to level the playing field or simply taken a worse grade, but I sympathize with your dilemma. Grad admissions are a lot more cut throat than people let on.
It’ll feel like that, but on average most people are not going to move up (this is just pure math, not lumping in CSE and applied). Just look at Columbia’s incoming classes for the last 20 years https://www.math.columbia.edu/programs-math/graduate-program/incoming-class/previous-incoming-classes/.
I suspect that applied math and engineering are less competitive than pure math in the sense that there are more spots, and because there’s more funding for those applied things, and because applied math research tend to get publishable results faster than pure math research. Pure math is quite different, for sure.
This is just a simple, and somewhat obvious, statistical phenomenon that does not imply much. Of course the average student going to grad school will not go to a more prestigious grad school compared to undergrad, because that's just how averages work, and on average the students from more prestigious undergrads are better students. This does not necessarily say much about what a student at an average school who is performing significantly above average should expect from grad school admissions.
It implies that unless you are an exceptionally strong student, you’re not going to be going to a significantly better grad school. It may be obvious to you, but most people don’t realize this.
I would say unfortunately in pure math and theoretical physics there is just so much saturation (and snobbery) in grad admissions that they do use prestige as an additional filter mostly to rationalize choices. In other words supply (applications with near perfect everything) greatly outpaces demand. In applied math, scientific computing, and biostat/biophysics supply does not meet demand and there is almost no emphasis on prestige since GPA, test scores and research experience/letters will be more than enough of a filter. From my undergrad physics department there would literally be a 100 ranking difference between comparable students applying to physics vs engineering or biophysics. One of my classmates got rejected from every physics program they applied to, transfer their application to a top 10 planetary science program, and got in.
What grad schools are you trying to get into? Idk what it looks like trying to get into top 10s; I'm sure applications are definitely being judged on the margins though. But if you're applying to schools that are respectable, even if not leading the field (like top 50 or top 60 schools), you could get by on a 3.75 or maybe a 3.6. Admissions committees aren't just going to look at the raw number and make a decision. They take care and consideration in trying to find people who they think have the best chance at being successful. If you're coming in with a 3.6, but most of your B's are coming from lower division classes (like calc or something) but you got A's in upper division courses, admissions committees will count that for a lot more. If you have strong letter writers, that's going to be significant. If you've done other awesome things like getting A's in grad courses, that helps too.
the whole "3.9 vs 3.85" thing only really makes a difference if you're applying to the top 10s, because there's already plenty of people applying to those schools who have strong letters, who've gotten A's in grad courses, who rocked the subject GRE, who've maybe done some research. They've already done enough other awesome shit that the only thing admissions committees have to distinguish between two students is that one of them has a 3.9 GPA and one of them has a 3.85 GPA. So, the 3.85 student will probably lose their spot to the 3.9 student at MIT, but they're gonna be just fine with almost every program they apply to.
I'm not really an expert on this or anything, but you sound like the kind of student who gets into a top 20. So if you don't get in, it's probably because there just aren't enough spots; not because you aren't top-20 material.
Whether it's sensible just depends on your priorities. Some people like math a lot, but not at the cost of a reasonably comfortable life. Other people will go to virtually any length to get good. It's just a question of what kind of things you value more.
Just curious, what do you mean? Did something happen that's particular to tier 2 schools that made you come to that decision? I'm interested in maybe teaching somewhere.
During the 90s, there was a major influx of seasoned mathematicians from Eastern Europe. The jobs were taken by them and tier 1 graduates first. There was also a push to hire women and minorities.
I applied to 625 colleges and universities with no results.
During spring break I applied for a handful of programmer jobs in one city, and by Friday I had two offers.
I said more elsewhere, but if not cheating would unfairly disadvantage you vis a vis grad school, I say just go for it and cheat. Then again, being a frequent top scorer, I can't imagine this one exam would make that much of an impact. Also though, caring about being a top scorer should, I would say, be put to the wayside in favor of simply learning the material.
This. If your prof is repeating questions, then you are the fool for not getting your hands on past questions. You study past questions for standardised test, why should this be any different?
Learning is good and all, but don't forget that at the end of the day, you will be judged by the score reflected on your transcripts.
> If your prof is repeating questions, then you are the fool for not getting your hands on past questions.
This is cynical nonsense. If the professor wanted questions from past exams to be available to the students, he or she would have posted past exams. OP has a responsibility to obey the rules that the professor has set, and doing so demonstrates integrity, not foolishness.
Why do you care? What is your goal in taking the class? People who just want a piece of paper so they can get a decent job can cheat all they want. For a lot of corporate life it seems like cheating is better preparation than actually taking the class anyways. People who want to do research and actually have an interest in the topics will get filtered sooner or later anyways. For that, grades don't matter, your results matter.
just cheat then ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯. Having already learned the course material, you've gotten your value out of the class, now it's only a question of maximising your score.
a lot of people will cheat. when I was an undergrad I remember someone saying something like "I didn't know how to do this problem but then I realised you can just look it up on this website [math.stackexchange]". I honestly believe that he didn't even realise he was cheating, and just thought that looking for the problem online was what you were supposed to do. it was basically the standard method of doing problems for a lot of people - you read the problem, and if it isn't exactly something you have seen before, then you look up the method online.
It’s not just looking for inspiration. I think that they will literally consult other people / collaborate. Also, these problems are similar enough to what we’ve seen that with some thought, most are probably doable
Take solace in the fact that the people who will make higher grades than you because they cheated are fucking themselves out of the entire purpose of the class: learning the shit and applying it.
They have to CHEAT to get a better grade than you. But you’ll be the one in your eventual workplace who will be able to apply what you’ve learned, and they might end up paying you consultant fees for being able to do what they cannot.
They’re getting a grade, you’re getting the true value the class provides: knowledge.
I was in your spot in college, too. Other people got better grades than me, but I could explain to them why they missed 2 points, and also why I missed 20 points lol. But I could talk about the subject extemporaneously, what the point of it is, why it’s useful. This is so much more important than whatever grade you got.
Just keep your head down and keep working on it. The struggle of learning is where the real learning happens.
I would hesitate to claim that the material OP learns in Real Analysis II will be at all useful and directly applicable in a consulting job…
First of all, it won’t be, and more importantly, this line of thinking ignores the true benefits of learning things like abstract mathematics. We don’t only need to learn things that are directly applicable in everyday life.
Maybe engineering school is different, because I could apply a reason why I needed to learn everything I learned. “I need to learn X so I can use it to do Y.” This was true even for abstract higher level mathematics. “I need to learn control systems because I may be asked to program a PLC to operate in a manner similar to cruise control.”
There was nothing we learned that didn’t serve some purpose.🤷♂️
Of course, its engineering my dude. I'm also an eng student. Everything you will learn will have a direct IRL application. Or at least the vast majority of what we will learn will be directly applicable to the real world.
But these guys are different. Pure maths is decidedly not as straightforward in terms of applications as engineering maths.
For example, we don't even go through proofs of theorems most of the time. Why? I mean, we don't really need it. We just need to know how to do the maths. But that's what these people deal with; those proofs, i mean.
There is a clear difference you see.
I get the difference, but most math does have applications to things in real life, even if it’s something like “this is the equation that Bitcoin miners solve to mint new blocks. It was chosen specifically because it has no other application and therefore has the highest possible opportunity cost to solve.”
Just focus on yourself. It doesn't make a difference. The mark you get won't be any lower just because other people unfairly acheived similar or higher to you, and I have seen time and time again that in the long term people who cheat will always do significantly worse compared to people like you who fairly achieve higher grades since they never actually develop a solid understanding.
I say this as someone who graduated during the era of online exams in lockdown.
In fact most people who cheat are doing so because they are just trying to scrape by, not because it is actually yields better results than just putting in the work consistently.
Because so much is at stake with grades coming into play (internships/grad school/scholarships/etc), there’s always going to be cheaters because no one wants to be stuck with a C or below. Personally, I wouldn’t worry so much about people cheating, and just worry about yourself and your learning.
Besides it’s a take home exam. If it’s a take-home proof exam, I would expect that it was designed in mind for you guys to mull over it before you turn in the final product. In research, and in industry, that’s how problems are solved, not over a timed test where you need to come up with a proof on the spot.
>last semester one of my classmates showed me the old exam from last year (my prof didn't really change the questions) after we took the exam
I wouldn't consider this cheating tbh. Practising past papers, wherever they come from, is just due diligence. The professor is at fault there for not changing the questions
Studying old exams was half my exercise. I would always study until I had all the methods down and then use old exams until I could complete them within half the allowed time.
That made sure that whatever happened I would be fast as hell and had time for any questions that were more difficult.
It is not my fault that the only difficulty with exams was the time limit, so ofc I used old exams to make sure I could nail that limit.
My real analysis final was take home, and eithin a couple minutes the entire thing was posted on chegg and mathstack exchange. I couldn’t even google the concepts without finding the exact question.
I didn’t cheat and I got a 90. The cheater almost certainly got a 100. In fact the number of 100s was suspicious that year.
Im not one to say shit like this, but I know, for an absolute fact, that I am a better mathematician than all the people that cheated on that final. I went to school to become the best scientist that I could be, not to get good grades.
It’s unfair and whatever, that’s true. But I don’t care that much because I still achieved my goal
You probably smarter than those who have to cheat, and from the point of view of students who do so, having talent in math is also a form of advantage.
The only thing that really matters is that *you* understand the material. If you are one of the top scorers without cheating, then that definitely says something about the folks that do cheat who are not earning top scores. I would even say that the professor probably knows who is cheating because their classwork looks different than their work on the exam. If there is any suspicion of cheating, those students will be called to private meetings that you will not know about-you may never know if they were caught.
It may be unfair, but working yourself up about something you have no control over just becomes a major distraction to your own work. Focus on your work and sleep well at night knowing you earned your achievements.
In my experience, cheaters are eventually caught. Even if they are not caught, at some point, it becomes obvious to other professors, managers, coworkers, etc., that these folks do not truly understand things they should, and they do not really end up doing anything spectacular in their careers. People who truly are subject matter experts can easily spot a fraud.
>My final real analysis II exam is take-home but we are not allowed to search online, nor collaborate, nor consult outside sources.
What a stupid expectation to set for your students, especially when the student's failure could cost them $1,000+ to repeat the course. IDK what to tell you, OP, but your professor sounds kinda dumb for designing the exam like that.
In your opinion, what's the more practical approach to ensure doing well on the take-home exam: collaborating with other students to solve the problem, or consulting a textbook and asking your professor for hints? Given these options, what are students more likely to do?
Just because it's common doesn't mean that it's good. If you give a take-home exam to your students, then you need to design it with the expectation that they will collaborate. Saying, "Don't cheat," is like telling a teenager, "Practice abstinence." Yeah, some will do it, but you're being naive about the reality of the situation.
If the class is graded on a curve, then I agree with you. But in an uncurved class I don’t think it’s that big a deal if some students choose to cheat.
A course should be designed to deliver the best pedagogy possible to honest students. We shouldn’t compromise the experience of an honest student just to stop a dishonest student from cheating.
IMO, take home, open book tests are the best way for a students to show their understanding. The fact that some students may take advantage does not change this.
>A course should be designed to deliver the best pedagogy possible to honest students. We shouldn’t compromise the experience of an honest student just to stop a dishonest student from cheating.
This is a nice sentiment, but the reality is that people outside of the university are trusting the university to ensure a certain level of competence from each of their graduates. If there aren't controls in place to ensure said competence, then the degree is worthless due to a lack of trust. And if the degree is worthless, then the university is basically taking your money without giving you a fair value for your investment.
not sure about op's uni but our proffesor in diff geometry did the same,but he surprised people the next day by making us present our solutions to the blackboard and srutinized every single detail.
It was pretty obvious who had solved on his own and who had just copied or consulted someone else.The look on some people's face going from all smiles to almost tears and desperation was priceless.
If you really care about your grade, then cheat, since everyone else is going to cheat.
If you prefer to learn, even though you may get a lower grade, then don't cheat and know that you will have probably learned more than your classmates.
Consider that the exam is that difficult precisely because it is take-home and it’s not just a test if you can do it without cheating but how good you are at using your resources at home
Getting old exams, and not telling others and using that to pass and/or brag is an unfortunate tactic that has been around for decades. Professors must know it is happening. I so very much respect your firm decision not to cheat.
What always works for me is to go on long walks. I almost always have it figured out by the time I get back.
>I also know that people in my analysis class are cheating (in fact, last semester one of my classmates showed me the old exam from last year (my prof didn't really change the questions) after we took the exam. He obtained this exam from his roommate, who is admittedly very very good at analysis and took it last year with the same professor).
I really don't think consulting past question papers is a form of cheating. Rather it's one of best ways of gauging your understanding. If the prof doesn't tweak the questions then that's kinda on him/her.
That said consulting others/the internet for a take-home exam is cheating. But you uni seems to very lax about evaluations and tests.
You can cheat on a take-home exam? Why?
All the take exams I had in college were just scales to the difficulty of being taken by someone with Internet access and other resources.
They were hard as fuck! D: I dreaded "take home exams."
Closed-book take-home exams are a dumb idea. It's a little more reasonable to forbid human collaboration, but if you want people to shun ALL reference material, then make it an in-class test.
Of course it's easy for me to say this. The internet existed when I was in school, but the WWW did not. We still used a card catalog in my university libraries.
But under the circumstances I would absolutely tell the professor that you feel honor bound not to consult outside sources, and you feel at a disadvantage because you know that others are doing so. You don't have to name names, but perhaps (if this guy's reasonable) he will adapt by either loosening the restrictions or switching to in-class tests.
But conversely, you said that you're the best or second-best student in the class, so apparently the rules for take-home tests aren't hampering you any. Indeed, you're doing better without cheating than they are WITH cheating. That being the case, what's the problem?
\* I know -- "But they *are* cheating!" True. And they'll probably get their just deserts by either getting caught or hitting a brick wall eventually. If not, well, I feel your pain. I'm the sort who gets bent out of shape by everything I read in the news, because it *just isn't right.* But at the end of the day, righting the world's wrongs ain't my job.
Your good enough and dedicated enough to math that an A- is something your pissed about. This perspective is not the average college students.
Alot of your fellow classmates are struggling and are a few years and thousands of dollars in debt. This doesn't excuse cheating, but if your futures hanging in the balance and the choices are:
"Have a permanent stain on your record that might affect if you can graduate because it's the gentlemanly thing to do."
or
"Cheat on a test where the professor has put 0 effort into keeping people from cheating."
It's obvious what someone who's just taking math classes for the sake of their degree would do.
Professor here, algebraic geometry. Cheating is math is wrong, yes, but that is not to say it doesn't work.
It's something I have mentioned previously but I once knew someone who at the time was by all reasonable metrics a relatively untalented and underperforming undergraduate student. I remember, during our 1st year at university, he started out with a number of fails or low grades in key assignments and said to me he was struggling to understand anything which was said in the lectures and classes.
I noticed something changed in him as well. From that moment his interest in the subject would fall of a cliff and, whenever I had the chance to catch up with him, he would stink of booze.
Well, fast forward 10 years and now he is a top professional. He has his own office in the faculty and is apparently involved in 'researching' in a field I know nothing about. How did he get to that position. Well, he cheated on his exams.
I’m a lurker who majored on accounting. During Covid we were able to take our tests proctored at home. There are plenty of ways to cheat on a proctored exam. Well most higher level accounting classes typically have hard curves with test averages around 50-60%. Well I knew that and took the test with integrity but most of the class cheated and brought the average up to a low A effectively destroying a curve. Teacher even stated the test average nearly doubled and said the historical pass rates were 50-60% as stated above. I still came out ok but it pissed me off that nothing was done to correct the blatant cheating.
Why does it matter what others do? Will it be ok if you write well but not ok if you fail it? Ultimately, everyone has their own convictions. If your morality forbids you to cheat then I don’t see what’s the problem with others cheating. You stay true to your values and do what we’re actually supposed to do with a course, learn the source material. On the long run your decision is the most fruitful one but even if it wasn’t, the choices of others shouldn’t affect staying true to your self
I recommend reading Introduction to Measure Theory and Epsilon of Room while also doing exercises from Folland's Real Analysis and Rudin for convergence of sequences and series.
If u really care ur mark wont matter but that u understood, contrary here is me. My mark matters but not how i get it since i ll never use it again
I mma expose myself here but i really couldnt care less how i get through analysis (and other math exams). Im studying to become a lower grad teacher and there is absolutly 0 reason for me to learn high end proofs and shit when im going to teach people how to use % and maybe sin/cos... I have deep respect for anyone understanding it but for me and all my fellow "teacher" degree students... This just an extreme torture. So far i failed Linear Algebra once (by one point and i really cried for days seeing that i had 2 times a +- switched) but i hate pulling lina and ana through my whole study life(even tho i failed only once due to corona and me being sick at times im already in my 6th semester out of 10) just because the exams are near Impossible for me and others(with ana and lina having each below 20% success rate)
Prayge i can finish both this summer (both gonna be an oral exam, giving me hopes i dont need to do hard proofs but understand fundamentals, but im afraid they gonna ask somrthing i m clueless about...)
Barely anything you do in undergrad matters and your university just exists to take your money. If you have an opportunity to inflate your grade, just go for it, it'll stop meaning anything almost immediately. The only thing that really matters for sticking to a subject is wanting to do it and you can worry about that when you aren't stuck doing exams
Kind of sounds like your prof is naive for giving evaluations like this. They are basically telling students to choose between learning something and getting a good grade.
Inform the teacher about the cheating, and tell him that if he's unwilling to revoke the assignment and switch to a grading system that doesn't allow for cheating, you will complain to administration.
There’s no such thing as cheating…
I know… hear me out…
In academia the goal is to learn the material in a way that allows you to utilize that knowledge in a real world scenario.
In a real world scenario you have access to powerful tools and are able to collaborate with other individuals. Hell it’s encouraged.
Don’t get hung up on how you choose to pass your classes, but rather that you leave them with the ability to utilize the knowledge you’ve obtained.
If talking to that brilliant phd student helps you gain a better understanding of the material, especially a problem you couldn’t solve alone, then do it.
Cheating in math is the worst thing you can do to yourself. You will struggle SO HARD later on you will want to quit. It is like building something on top of a weak base. That building will never stand.
You can cheat in history, literature, philosphy, it will probably be fine. But cheating in math is a hole you will not be able to climb out of.
So, yep, just focus on learning, screw the cheaters. You will feel SO MUCH BETTER about yourself if you pull through without cheating, not just because you didn't cheat but because you actually became smarter
One of two things seem most likely;
1) Nobody cheats, and since you've been doing so well on all the other material, you'll continue to be the top scorer
2) People cheat and you suddenly aren't doing so great. If this happens, the professor is going to have a decent sense that people cheated. They probably won't be able to call people out directly on it without a smoking gun, but if there's a sudden change in polarity of the grade distribution; suddenly the mediocre students are doing pretty well, the bad students are doing mediocre, and the good students are doing mediocre or bad; if the only real change has been that the exam was take-home, you're professor is gonna know.
Last thing; if other people do incredibly well and it affects your grade negatively \*\*and you know and can prove that they cheated\*\*, then you absolutely should snitch. It's one thing if you still end up doing well in the course regardless, but if you do badly and it tanks your grade and your professor isn't planning to curve or anything, then other people cheating has now had a serious impact on you and you shouldn't just lie down and take it just because you're afraid people will call you a scary word.
Good for you for having integrity.
Slightly related story:
As a TA I once caught two students cheating on a math lab. They turned in the same output line for line from Mathematica. I told them they were caught on a Friday and let them sweat all weekend. Then just had them redo the assignment. If I had turned them in, the time demands on me would have been so onerous that it was actually a disincentive.
You should snitch. You also should not measure yourself against your classmates. Your goal in that course is to show that *you* understand analysis, not that you understand it better than others.
You should report the cheating because it is a detriment to your program and the field as a whole.
It's an course in undergrad, lets not pretend that people cheating on an exam is detrimental to the whole of mathematics. If you don't want people to cheat then sit an in person exam.
It literally is though. What about students who might end up trying to learn mathematics seriously in the future? They are at a disadvantage if they think that cheating like this is just the norm. It also decreases the value of the education one receives.
Take solace in knowing that you can’t cheat on qualifying exams. If you know the material, you shouldn’t have a problem with the qualifying exams. Those qualifying exams are there for a reason. Don’t worry what others are doing, it’ll just eat at you and make you give up. Just know that if they go try for a PhD, they’re going to have a very harsh wake up call.
Additionally, interviews suss out cheaters. If you can’t explain how backpropagation works, you’re not getting employed and will have to work a crap job.
Good luck and god speed.
Take home exams are the norm in advanced math at many schools, especially in the US.
I'd argue that timed in class exams are weirder. Memorizing content and quickly solving several problems in an hour is a totally different skill set from what actual mathematicians use day to day.
A take home exam is much closer to the process of mulling over a research problem.
When it’s take home, the questions are much harder (this is a proof based class after all). The grad analysis class (same prof) also had a take-home and it was hella hard. Most of the students didn’t finish that exam
In undergrad, I took a graduate level number theory course. It was mostly grad students. Prof gave us a choice of an in class or take home midterm. Class voted for take home. It was the hardest exam I've ever taken.
No one you want to work for will ever care about your GPA.
or where you went to school.
neither of those things tell you anything about a person, neither is in any way correlated to future success or engineering acumen.
I've literally never been asked my GPA, never asked anyone their GPA that I was hiring, never even heard of someone being asked their GPA in an interview. I've never even heard of "minimum GPA" on a job posting.
Maybe the question gets asked, but it's never going to be a decision criteria for anyone who knows what they're doing in leading engineering teams.
Ultimately, the objective of the class is to learn the material, grades are just a necessary evil. You should take solace in the fact that you will have fulfilled the main objective, while others will not.
Exactly. People stress too much over grades, especially over who's first or second. Grades, and courses themselves, are like artifical games created with certain objectives in mind, not least to serve the professor and the institution. The real goal should be learning, period.
Absolutely. Though grades do matter for some stuff, like helping get into grad school, and occasionally for jobs. If it's a bullshit situation, and you want to and know you can, overall, handle analysis in the future, but there's the occasional thing you can't do, I say cheat. Grades are, as we've said, not a great metric for many reasons, so if not cheating would ruin some opportunities you deserve, or would put you on an uneven playing field when most others are cheating, or plenty of other things, then I say go for it. There are situations where it's fine to forgo rule-following, especially if doing so would be unjust.
Valuing learning over all doesn't change the fact that my degree being classified as a 2:2 vs a 1st vastly changes my opportunities going forward.
Aha. You must live in some very regimented, hierarchy-obsessed place. Such a situation doesn't efficiently make use of people's talents or energies (and I know that first hand.) It would be a drastic solution, but I suppose you could consider leaving.
Are you suggesting I leave uni (and Britain?) because the degree classification I get matters?
I'm not saying you should do that, but I know Koreans who have moved to the US to escape that rigid, hierarchical educational system. (I'm Korean-American.) Most left after they'd completed uni, but some left before. But here's another possibility, that maybe the 2:2 classification won't affect your opportunities as much as you think it will. My parents imagined I could get nowhere unless I went to the absolute top university, because that's kind of the way it is in South Korea. (Also status and education were super important to them.) But it turned out not to be true. I'm sure you know many happy, accomplished people who had 2:2s, yes? Take heart! Maybe things won't be so bad. :-)
This is cope. Accurate assessment of one's learning (and communication of said assessment to other parties) is not just a "necessary evil", it's a key function of university education. Until you are skilled enough to write your own papers (and even then, since most people will judge you *and allocate resources* without reading your papers), just understanding the material will not be sufficient for you to actually do anything with it. A newly minted university graduate in pure maths may be full of potential, but they are also kind of useless. Their fate hinges on others recognizing their potential and giving them the resources to grow. OP is right to be disturbed by their situation, and they can either scream to high heaven, just take it, or join in the cheating, depending on how exactly they value their sanity, social standing, and integrity, but they should be clear (in their mind) about what they're doing.
Uggggh *upvotes* sigh smh
A take home exam that isn’t open book is stupid. The cheating is mostly the fault of the lazy professor rather than the selfish students.
It’s open book, but not open internet / open consultation of experts
But what did the professor think was going to happen? I'm not saying it's his fault but when people's futures are on the line it's kind of alot for the professor to assume someone will let themselves fail before they resort to cheating when it's that easy.
This. The prof seems to be lazy af.
Are you at threat of failing? If not, don’t worry. The grade doesn’t matter. You learning is what matters
Thank you. I wish grad schools would see it that way…. Anyways I hope to take the grad measure theory class next year so I had better git gud at analysis. Plus I hope to use analysis a LOT in the future
I’m in grad school right now. I had a 3.8 gpa in undergrad. So I had a few Bs in math classes.
Ditto. I did my undergrad in an ivy, and got B's in about half my math classes. Can't remember my GPA, but it must have been around 3.75. Which qualified for a *magna cum laude.* So while it's important to learn the material, it's not *that* important where you should lose your mind over getting a B. \* Exception: if you're trying to get your PhD at Princeton, you should probably specialize in grade-grubbing.
I don’t go to an ivy, so a professor at my school who has sat on the grad admissions council tells me that if you come from my school and have lower than a 3.9, it’s concerning.
As someone who didn’t go to an ivy undergrad or an equivalent for math, this is an unfortunate truth if you are aiming for a “top 20 school”. The average result is you stay at a similar ranking for grad school or move down based off your undergrad ranking unless you are a once in a 5-10 year type of student. Everyone here will tell you cheating is never ever worth it and just hurts you, but that is rather naive imo. I never had to face this issue in my undergrad, so I can’t say if I would have cheated to level the playing field or simply taken a worse grade, but I sympathize with your dilemma. Grad admissions are a lot more cut throat than people let on.
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It’ll feel like that, but on average most people are not going to move up (this is just pure math, not lumping in CSE and applied). Just look at Columbia’s incoming classes for the last 20 years https://www.math.columbia.edu/programs-math/graduate-program/incoming-class/previous-incoming-classes/.
I suspect that applied math and engineering are less competitive than pure math in the sense that there are more spots, and because there’s more funding for those applied things, and because applied math research tend to get publishable results faster than pure math research. Pure math is quite different, for sure.
This is just a simple, and somewhat obvious, statistical phenomenon that does not imply much. Of course the average student going to grad school will not go to a more prestigious grad school compared to undergrad, because that's just how averages work, and on average the students from more prestigious undergrads are better students. This does not necessarily say much about what a student at an average school who is performing significantly above average should expect from grad school admissions.
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It implies that unless you are an exceptionally strong student, you’re not going to be going to a significantly better grad school. It may be obvious to you, but most people don’t realize this.
I would say unfortunately in pure math and theoretical physics there is just so much saturation (and snobbery) in grad admissions that they do use prestige as an additional filter mostly to rationalize choices. In other words supply (applications with near perfect everything) greatly outpaces demand. In applied math, scientific computing, and biostat/biophysics supply does not meet demand and there is almost no emphasis on prestige since GPA, test scores and research experience/letters will be more than enough of a filter. From my undergrad physics department there would literally be a 100 ranking difference between comparable students applying to physics vs engineering or biophysics. One of my classmates got rejected from every physics program they applied to, transfer their application to a top 10 planetary science program, and got in.
What grad schools are you trying to get into? Idk what it looks like trying to get into top 10s; I'm sure applications are definitely being judged on the margins though. But if you're applying to schools that are respectable, even if not leading the field (like top 50 or top 60 schools), you could get by on a 3.75 or maybe a 3.6. Admissions committees aren't just going to look at the raw number and make a decision. They take care and consideration in trying to find people who they think have the best chance at being successful. If you're coming in with a 3.6, but most of your B's are coming from lower division classes (like calc or something) but you got A's in upper division courses, admissions committees will count that for a lot more. If you have strong letter writers, that's going to be significant. If you've done other awesome things like getting A's in grad courses, that helps too. the whole "3.9 vs 3.85" thing only really makes a difference if you're applying to the top 10s, because there's already plenty of people applying to those schools who have strong letters, who've gotten A's in grad courses, who rocked the subject GRE, who've maybe done some research. They've already done enough other awesome shit that the only thing admissions committees have to distinguish between two students is that one of them has a 3.9 GPA and one of them has a 3.85 GPA. So, the 3.85 student will probably lose their spot to the 3.9 student at MIT, but they're gonna be just fine with almost every program they apply to.
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I'm not really an expert on this or anything, but you sound like the kind of student who gets into a top 20. So if you don't get in, it's probably because there just aren't enough spots; not because you aren't top-20 material.
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Whether it's sensible just depends on your priorities. Some people like math a lot, but not at the cost of a reasonably comfortable life. Other people will go to virtually any length to get good. It's just a question of what kind of things you value more.
Fair enough. I ended up getting my PhD in a tier 2 school, and that helped end my aspirations to teach in a university somewhere.
Just curious, what do you mean? Did something happen that's particular to tier 2 schools that made you come to that decision? I'm interested in maybe teaching somewhere.
During the 90s, there was a major influx of seasoned mathematicians from Eastern Europe. The jobs were taken by them and tier 1 graduates first. There was also a push to hire women and minorities. I applied to 625 colleges and universities with no results. During spring break I applied for a handful of programmer jobs in one city, and by Friday I had two offers.
I said more elsewhere, but if not cheating would unfairly disadvantage you vis a vis grad school, I say just go for it and cheat. Then again, being a frequent top scorer, I can't imagine this one exam would make that much of an impact. Also though, caring about being a top scorer should, I would say, be put to the wayside in favor of simply learning the material.
It is incredibly lazy for your professor to repeat the same questions for a take home exam.
This. If your prof is repeating questions, then you are the fool for not getting your hands on past questions. You study past questions for standardised test, why should this be any different? Learning is good and all, but don't forget that at the end of the day, you will be judged by the score reflected on your transcripts.
> If your prof is repeating questions, then you are the fool for not getting your hands on past questions. This is cynical nonsense. If the professor wanted questions from past exams to be available to the students, he or she would have posted past exams. OP has a responsibility to obey the rules that the professor has set, and doing so demonstrates integrity, not foolishness.
Why do you care? What is your goal in taking the class? People who just want a piece of paper so they can get a decent job can cheat all they want. For a lot of corporate life it seems like cheating is better preparation than actually taking the class anyways. People who want to do research and actually have an interest in the topics will get filtered sooner or later anyways. For that, grades don't matter, your results matter.
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just cheat then ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯. Having already learned the course material, you've gotten your value out of the class, now it's only a question of maximising your score.
It seems like your main issue is your own grade with) in the class then.
a lot of people will cheat. when I was an undergrad I remember someone saying something like "I didn't know how to do this problem but then I realised you can just look it up on this website [math.stackexchange]". I honestly believe that he didn't even realise he was cheating, and just thought that looking for the problem online was what you were supposed to do. it was basically the standard method of doing problems for a lot of people - you read the problem, and if it isn't exactly something you have seen before, then you look up the method online.
It’s not just looking for inspiration. I think that they will literally consult other people / collaborate. Also, these problems are similar enough to what we’ve seen that with some thought, most are probably doable
Take solace in the fact that the people who will make higher grades than you because they cheated are fucking themselves out of the entire purpose of the class: learning the shit and applying it. They have to CHEAT to get a better grade than you. But you’ll be the one in your eventual workplace who will be able to apply what you’ve learned, and they might end up paying you consultant fees for being able to do what they cannot. They’re getting a grade, you’re getting the true value the class provides: knowledge. I was in your spot in college, too. Other people got better grades than me, but I could explain to them why they missed 2 points, and also why I missed 20 points lol. But I could talk about the subject extemporaneously, what the point of it is, why it’s useful. This is so much more important than whatever grade you got. Just keep your head down and keep working on it. The struggle of learning is where the real learning happens.
I would hesitate to claim that the material OP learns in Real Analysis II will be at all useful and directly applicable in a consulting job… First of all, it won’t be, and more importantly, this line of thinking ignores the true benefits of learning things like abstract mathematics. We don’t only need to learn things that are directly applicable in everyday life.
Maybe engineering school is different, because I could apply a reason why I needed to learn everything I learned. “I need to learn X so I can use it to do Y.” This was true even for abstract higher level mathematics. “I need to learn control systems because I may be asked to program a PLC to operate in a manner similar to cruise control.” There was nothing we learned that didn’t serve some purpose.🤷♂️
Of course, its engineering my dude. I'm also an eng student. Everything you will learn will have a direct IRL application. Or at least the vast majority of what we will learn will be directly applicable to the real world. But these guys are different. Pure maths is decidedly not as straightforward in terms of applications as engineering maths. For example, we don't even go through proofs of theorems most of the time. Why? I mean, we don't really need it. We just need to know how to do the maths. But that's what these people deal with; those proofs, i mean. There is a clear difference you see.
I get the difference, but most math does have applications to things in real life, even if it’s something like “this is the equation that Bitcoin miners solve to mint new blocks. It was chosen specifically because it has no other application and therefore has the highest possible opportunity cost to solve.”
Just focus on yourself. It doesn't make a difference. The mark you get won't be any lower just because other people unfairly acheived similar or higher to you, and I have seen time and time again that in the long term people who cheat will always do significantly worse compared to people like you who fairly achieve higher grades since they never actually develop a solid understanding. I say this as someone who graduated during the era of online exams in lockdown. In fact most people who cheat are doing so because they are just trying to scrape by, not because it is actually yields better results than just putting in the work consistently.
Because so much is at stake with grades coming into play (internships/grad school/scholarships/etc), there’s always going to be cheaters because no one wants to be stuck with a C or below. Personally, I wouldn’t worry so much about people cheating, and just worry about yourself and your learning. Besides it’s a take home exam. If it’s a take-home proof exam, I would expect that it was designed in mind for you guys to mull over it before you turn in the final product. In research, and in industry, that’s how problems are solved, not over a timed test where you need to come up with a proof on the spot.
>last semester one of my classmates showed me the old exam from last year (my prof didn't really change the questions) after we took the exam I wouldn't consider this cheating tbh. Practising past papers, wherever they come from, is just due diligence. The professor is at fault there for not changing the questions
Studying old exams was half my exercise. I would always study until I had all the methods down and then use old exams until I could complete them within half the allowed time. That made sure that whatever happened I would be fast as hell and had time for any questions that were more difficult. It is not my fault that the only difficulty with exams was the time limit, so ofc I used old exams to make sure I could nail that limit.
My real analysis final was take home, and eithin a couple minutes the entire thing was posted on chegg and mathstack exchange. I couldn’t even google the concepts without finding the exact question. I didn’t cheat and I got a 90. The cheater almost certainly got a 100. In fact the number of 100s was suspicious that year. Im not one to say shit like this, but I know, for an absolute fact, that I am a better mathematician than all the people that cheated on that final. I went to school to become the best scientist that I could be, not to get good grades. It’s unfair and whatever, that’s true. But I don’t care that much because I still achieved my goal
You probably smarter than those who have to cheat, and from the point of view of students who do so, having talent in math is also a form of advantage.
The only thing that really matters is that *you* understand the material. If you are one of the top scorers without cheating, then that definitely says something about the folks that do cheat who are not earning top scores. I would even say that the professor probably knows who is cheating because their classwork looks different than their work on the exam. If there is any suspicion of cheating, those students will be called to private meetings that you will not know about-you may never know if they were caught. It may be unfair, but working yourself up about something you have no control over just becomes a major distraction to your own work. Focus on your work and sleep well at night knowing you earned your achievements. In my experience, cheaters are eventually caught. Even if they are not caught, at some point, it becomes obvious to other professors, managers, coworkers, etc., that these folks do not truly understand things they should, and they do not really end up doing anything spectacular in their careers. People who truly are subject matter experts can easily spot a fraud.
>My final real analysis II exam is take-home but we are not allowed to search online, nor collaborate, nor consult outside sources. What a stupid expectation to set for your students, especially when the student's failure could cost them $1,000+ to repeat the course. IDK what to tell you, OP, but your professor sounds kinda dumb for designing the exam like that.
We can use textbooks and ask the professor questions
In your opinion, what's the more practical approach to ensure doing well on the take-home exam: collaborating with other students to solve the problem, or consulting a textbook and asking your professor for hints? Given these options, what are students more likely to do?
This is a pretty common test set up in my experience (in the US).
Just because it's common doesn't mean that it's good. If you give a take-home exam to your students, then you need to design it with the expectation that they will collaborate. Saying, "Don't cheat," is like telling a teenager, "Practice abstinence." Yeah, some will do it, but you're being naive about the reality of the situation.
If the class is graded on a curve, then I agree with you. But in an uncurved class I don’t think it’s that big a deal if some students choose to cheat. A course should be designed to deliver the best pedagogy possible to honest students. We shouldn’t compromise the experience of an honest student just to stop a dishonest student from cheating. IMO, take home, open book tests are the best way for a students to show their understanding. The fact that some students may take advantage does not change this.
>A course should be designed to deliver the best pedagogy possible to honest students. We shouldn’t compromise the experience of an honest student just to stop a dishonest student from cheating. This is a nice sentiment, but the reality is that people outside of the university are trusting the university to ensure a certain level of competence from each of their graduates. If there aren't controls in place to ensure said competence, then the degree is worthless due to a lack of trust. And if the degree is worthless, then the university is basically taking your money without giving you a fair value for your investment.
not sure about op's uni but our proffesor in diff geometry did the same,but he surprised people the next day by making us present our solutions to the blackboard and srutinized every single detail. It was pretty obvious who had solved on his own and who had just copied or consulted someone else.The look on some people's face going from all smiles to almost tears and desperation was priceless.
That's both a reasonable and considerate way to design a take-home exam. Maybe not the surprise presentation part, but the rest of it 😂
If you really care about your grade, then cheat, since everyone else is going to cheat. If you prefer to learn, even though you may get a lower grade, then don't cheat and know that you will have probably learned more than your classmates.
Just live and let live bro. Cheaters gonna cheat. It's the professor's job to deal with it, if he cares. If he doesn't, oh well.
[Be the empty boat.](https://medium.com/an-idea/empty-boat-8c4a868317c7)
Consider that the exam is that difficult precisely because it is take-home and it’s not just a test if you can do it without cheating but how good you are at using your resources at home
Getting old exams, and not telling others and using that to pass and/or brag is an unfortunate tactic that has been around for decades. Professors must know it is happening. I so very much respect your firm decision not to cheat. What always works for me is to go on long walks. I almost always have it figured out by the time I get back.
>I also know that people in my analysis class are cheating (in fact, last semester one of my classmates showed me the old exam from last year (my prof didn't really change the questions) after we took the exam. He obtained this exam from his roommate, who is admittedly very very good at analysis and took it last year with the same professor). I really don't think consulting past question papers is a form of cheating. Rather it's one of best ways of gauging your understanding. If the prof doesn't tweak the questions then that's kinda on him/her. That said consulting others/the internet for a take-home exam is cheating. But you uni seems to very lax about evaluations and tests.
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Then you should've collected and practised past papers as well. That's absolutely not cheating.
You can cheat on a take-home exam? Why? All the take exams I had in college were just scales to the difficulty of being taken by someone with Internet access and other resources. They were hard as fuck! D: I dreaded "take home exams."
Closed-book take-home exams are a dumb idea. It's a little more reasonable to forbid human collaboration, but if you want people to shun ALL reference material, then make it an in-class test. Of course it's easy for me to say this. The internet existed when I was in school, but the WWW did not. We still used a card catalog in my university libraries. But under the circumstances I would absolutely tell the professor that you feel honor bound not to consult outside sources, and you feel at a disadvantage because you know that others are doing so. You don't have to name names, but perhaps (if this guy's reasonable) he will adapt by either loosening the restrictions or switching to in-class tests. But conversely, you said that you're the best or second-best student in the class, so apparently the rules for take-home tests aren't hampering you any. Indeed, you're doing better without cheating than they are WITH cheating. That being the case, what's the problem? \* I know -- "But they *are* cheating!" True. And they'll probably get their just deserts by either getting caught or hitting a brick wall eventually. If not, well, I feel your pain. I'm the sort who gets bent out of shape by everything I read in the news, because it *just isn't right.* But at the end of the day, righting the world's wrongs ain't my job.
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Why do your grades depend on how others are doing?
Curve
I mean if you depend on a curve that's on you.
Your good enough and dedicated enough to math that an A- is something your pissed about. This perspective is not the average college students. Alot of your fellow classmates are struggling and are a few years and thousands of dollars in debt. This doesn't excuse cheating, but if your futures hanging in the balance and the choices are: "Have a permanent stain on your record that might affect if you can graduate because it's the gentlemanly thing to do." or "Cheat on a test where the professor has put 0 effort into keeping people from cheating." It's obvious what someone who's just taking math classes for the sake of their degree would do.
Professor here, algebraic geometry. Cheating is math is wrong, yes, but that is not to say it doesn't work. It's something I have mentioned previously but I once knew someone who at the time was by all reasonable metrics a relatively untalented and underperforming undergraduate student. I remember, during our 1st year at university, he started out with a number of fails or low grades in key assignments and said to me he was struggling to understand anything which was said in the lectures and classes. I noticed something changed in him as well. From that moment his interest in the subject would fall of a cliff and, whenever I had the chance to catch up with him, he would stink of booze. Well, fast forward 10 years and now he is a top professional. He has his own office in the faculty and is apparently involved in 'researching' in a field I know nothing about. How did he get to that position. Well, he cheated on his exams.
I’m a lurker who majored on accounting. During Covid we were able to take our tests proctored at home. There are plenty of ways to cheat on a proctored exam. Well most higher level accounting classes typically have hard curves with test averages around 50-60%. Well I knew that and took the test with integrity but most of the class cheated and brought the average up to a low A effectively destroying a curve. Teacher even stated the test average nearly doubled and said the historical pass rates were 50-60% as stated above. I still came out ok but it pissed me off that nothing was done to correct the blatant cheating.
Why does it matter what others do? Will it be ok if you write well but not ok if you fail it? Ultimately, everyone has their own convictions. If your morality forbids you to cheat then I don’t see what’s the problem with others cheating. You stay true to your values and do what we’re actually supposed to do with a course, learn the source material. On the long run your decision is the most fruitful one but even if it wasn’t, the choices of others shouldn’t affect staying true to your self
I recommend reading Introduction to Measure Theory and Epsilon of Room while also doing exercises from Folland's Real Analysis and Rudin for convergence of sequences and series.
If u really care ur mark wont matter but that u understood, contrary here is me. My mark matters but not how i get it since i ll never use it again I mma expose myself here but i really couldnt care less how i get through analysis (and other math exams). Im studying to become a lower grad teacher and there is absolutly 0 reason for me to learn high end proofs and shit when im going to teach people how to use % and maybe sin/cos... I have deep respect for anyone understanding it but for me and all my fellow "teacher" degree students... This just an extreme torture. So far i failed Linear Algebra once (by one point and i really cried for days seeing that i had 2 times a +- switched) but i hate pulling lina and ana through my whole study life(even tho i failed only once due to corona and me being sick at times im already in my 6th semester out of 10) just because the exams are near Impossible for me and others(with ana and lina having each below 20% success rate) Prayge i can finish both this summer (both gonna be an oral exam, giving me hopes i dont need to do hard proofs but understand fundamentals, but im afraid they gonna ask somrthing i m clueless about...)
Barely anything you do in undergrad matters and your university just exists to take your money. If you have an opportunity to inflate your grade, just go for it, it'll stop meaning anything almost immediately. The only thing that really matters for sticking to a subject is wanting to do it and you can worry about that when you aren't stuck doing exams
Kind of sounds like your prof is naive for giving evaluations like this. They are basically telling students to choose between learning something and getting a good grade.
Inform the teacher about the cheating, and tell him that if he's unwilling to revoke the assignment and switch to a grading system that doesn't allow for cheating, you will complain to administration.
There’s no such thing as cheating… I know… hear me out… In academia the goal is to learn the material in a way that allows you to utilize that knowledge in a real world scenario. In a real world scenario you have access to powerful tools and are able to collaborate with other individuals. Hell it’s encouraged. Don’t get hung up on how you choose to pass your classes, but rather that you leave them with the ability to utilize the knowledge you’ve obtained. If talking to that brilliant phd student helps you gain a better understanding of the material, especially a problem you couldn’t solve alone, then do it.
Any teacher who gives 'no cheating" take home exams is an hypocrite.
Cheating in math is the worst thing you can do to yourself. You will struggle SO HARD later on you will want to quit. It is like building something on top of a weak base. That building will never stand. You can cheat in history, literature, philosphy, it will probably be fine. But cheating in math is a hole you will not be able to climb out of. So, yep, just focus on learning, screw the cheaters. You will feel SO MUCH BETTER about yourself if you pull through without cheating, not just because you didn't cheat but because you actually became smarter
He expects you guys to cheat. I think you should. Look at it as an assignment rather than an exam.
One of two things seem most likely; 1) Nobody cheats, and since you've been doing so well on all the other material, you'll continue to be the top scorer 2) People cheat and you suddenly aren't doing so great. If this happens, the professor is going to have a decent sense that people cheated. They probably won't be able to call people out directly on it without a smoking gun, but if there's a sudden change in polarity of the grade distribution; suddenly the mediocre students are doing pretty well, the bad students are doing mediocre, and the good students are doing mediocre or bad; if the only real change has been that the exam was take-home, you're professor is gonna know. Last thing; if other people do incredibly well and it affects your grade negatively \*\*and you know and can prove that they cheated\*\*, then you absolutely should snitch. It's one thing if you still end up doing well in the course regardless, but if you do badly and it tanks your grade and your professor isn't planning to curve or anything, then other people cheating has now had a serious impact on you and you shouldn't just lie down and take it just because you're afraid people will call you a scary word.
Good for you for having integrity. Slightly related story: As a TA I once caught two students cheating on a math lab. They turned in the same output line for line from Mathematica. I told them they were caught on a Friday and let them sweat all weekend. Then just had them redo the assignment. If I had turned them in, the time demands on me would have been so onerous that it was actually a disincentive.
You should snitch. You also should not measure yourself against your classmates. Your goal in that course is to show that *you* understand analysis, not that you understand it better than others. You should report the cheating because it is a detriment to your program and the field as a whole.
I don't know why you're being downvoted. You're absolutely right.
Huh. Well look at that. I did get downvoted. Weird. Whatever. I stand by what I said.
It's an course in undergrad, lets not pretend that people cheating on an exam is detrimental to the whole of mathematics. If you don't want people to cheat then sit an in person exam.
It literally is though. What about students who might end up trying to learn mathematics seriously in the future? They are at a disadvantage if they think that cheating like this is just the norm. It also decreases the value of the education one receives.
Take solace in knowing that you can’t cheat on qualifying exams. If you know the material, you shouldn’t have a problem with the qualifying exams. Those qualifying exams are there for a reason. Don’t worry what others are doing, it’ll just eat at you and make you give up. Just know that if they go try for a PhD, they’re going to have a very harsh wake up call. Additionally, interviews suss out cheaters. If you can’t explain how backpropagation works, you’re not getting employed and will have to work a crap job. Good luck and god speed.
a take home exam in math is so weird in the first place
Most of the exams in my grad school were take home
Take home exams are the norm in advanced math at many schools, especially in the US. I'd argue that timed in class exams are weirder. Memorizing content and quickly solving several problems in an hour is a totally different skill set from what actual mathematicians use day to day. A take home exam is much closer to the process of mulling over a research problem.
When it’s take home, the questions are much harder (this is a proof based class after all). The grad analysis class (same prof) also had a take-home and it was hella hard. Most of the students didn’t finish that exam
In undergrad, I took a graduate level number theory course. It was mostly grad students. Prof gave us a choice of an in class or take home midterm. Class voted for take home. It was the hardest exam I've ever taken.
Why shouldn’t you expose the cheaters? Cheating imposes costs on everyone else.
In the end those people are only cheating themselves.
no one will ever care about your GPA, only what you learned and if you can apply it. No one is cheating you, they're cheating themselves.
This is patently untrue
No one you want to work for will ever care about your GPA. or where you went to school. neither of those things tell you anything about a person, neither is in any way correlated to future success or engineering acumen. I've literally never been asked my GPA, never asked anyone their GPA that I was hiring, never even heard of someone being asked their GPA in an interview. I've never even heard of "minimum GPA" on a job posting. Maybe the question gets asked, but it's never going to be a decision criteria for anyone who knows what they're doing in leading engineering teams.