I don’t think this one requires any explanation: Hello:customer surveys Staying up watching the Giants game last night was not conducive to getting anything useful done this morning.
Category: Polls
Academic Poll: Proctoring
I’m giving the final exam in my introductory E&M class this morning, which means spending a couple of hours sitting in a room full of students taking a test and doing my best not to fall asleep. As far as I’m concerned, getting rid of exam proctoring is the best argument for an honor code […]
Poll: Significant Figures
I’m grading a big backlog of homeworks today, so I don’t have time to do any really lengthy posts this morning. Thus, a poll question inspired by going through these homeworks: You are doing a physics homework problem. How many significant figures do you report?survey software While the class in question uses some quantum ideas, […]
Academic Poll: Course Selection
We’ve just recently completed pre-registration for Winter term classes, so I’ve been thinking a bit about why students do and do not sign up for things. Thus, a poll: You are a college student considering an elective class in your major, and you see it has a lab. Your reaction is:survey software Feel free to […]
Bakery Poll: The _____ on the Cake
Having posted not one but two snarky political entries in recent days, I feel like I owe the Internet a couple of ResearchBlogging posts to make up for it. It’s the last week of classes here, though, which means I have a lot of frantic work to do. Thus, a frivolous poll inspired by the […]
Etiquette Poll: Trash Day
Chateau Steelypips lost power this morning for unknown reasons, preventing me from putting up the post I planned to do with lots of cute toddler pictures. Thus, a quickie poll in honor of the crazy person a couple of blocks away who sometimes yells at me for dropping Emmy’s bagged poop into her full trash […]
Academic Poll: Exam Philosophy
I’m spending a good chunk of the morning grading the exam that I gave yesterday, so here’s a poll on what you might call exam philosophy. Our classes are small, so the bulk of our exams are free-response problems, and we tend to break those problems into sub-parts (1a, 1b, 1c, etc.). There are two […]
Poll: Halloween Books
I almost forgot something that I need to do today, so no lengthy and detailed blogging this morning. Instead, a quick poll regarding Neil Gaiman’s suggestion of giving kids scary books for Halloween: Neil Gaiman suggests giving kids scary books for Halloween. What do you think?online surveys Halloween is a classic holiday, which means you’re […]
Musical Poll: Remix This!
On the way in to work, I heard yet another example of the deplorable trend of taking the vocal tracks of slow songs– in this case, “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” by Vampire Weekend– and replacing the musical backing with a 120 beats-per-minute dance beat that sounds like it was generated by a high-end […]
Poll: The Peter Threshold
As a sort of follow-up to yesterday’s post asking about incompetent teachers, a poll on what you might call the “Peter Threshold,” after the Peter Principle. Exactly how many incompetent members can an organization tolerate? The acceptable level of incompetence in any organization (that is, the fraction of employees who can’t do their jobs) is:Market […]