Quirks of examinations

Years ago, while marking answer scripts of a professional audit examination in UK, an examiner must have been tickled to point out the following quoted by a student:-

“an auditor’s role is that of a watchdog, and not a bloody greyhound”.

The student was trying to quote the Kingston Cotton Mills case in which the judge quoted, “an auditor’s role is that of a watchdog, and not a blood hound”.

It would be interesting to see if there would be any wrong answers if both quotes were given in an objective test.

I was told by a retired teacher in Malaysia that there was once a directive from the Education Ministry to the examiners of a certain level school examination. They were told to set objective questions with say, multiple choice given from (a) to (e) each, which must have an even spread (if this is the right term). In other words, in total, there must be 20% each of (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) of correct answers.

Word got round, and even the worst students could get 20% marks by just marking one pattern. For instance, only (a), for the whole paper!