Wager 101: Students Bet on Their Grades | Hacker News Reader

Wager 101: Students Bet on Their Grades

online.wsj.com

15 pointsgrellas8 comments

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This was covered pretty extensively a week ago, although no one commented on it then:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1599523 : USA Today

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1595995 : Hack Education

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1595526 : Philly.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1592416 : Huffington Post

ADDED IN EDIT : I wrote what follows when the parent comment had been down-voted to 0. As I write this it's been re-up-voted to 1. Who knows where it will go next - I watch with curiousity, but little understanding.

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Bizarre - some people up-vote people who cross-reference items about the same topic, and others down-vote. I guess it's my background in wiki technology, always wanting to cross-reference and make things tidy, as opposed to the forum mind-set that seems happy to tolerate sprawling, ephemeral discussions rather than create something of lasting value.

For one, I hate wasting effort, and wasting other people's efforts. I thought that cross-referencing tuff would help prevent duplication of effort, and generally enrich the information, but clearly there are others who not only disagree, but actively think it's of negative value.

<shrug> I don't understand that, but would be happy to read an explanation.

I appreciate the cross-referencing, as you provided four additional sources for more information.

I'm guessing that in this case, however, your phrasing may have come across as dismissive. Its not hard to imagine an overly-critical reader (someone who isn't giving your motives the benefit of the doubt) seeing "This was covered pretty extensively a week ago, although no one commented on it then" and inferring "so why are you posting it again? Here I'll add a bunch of links to prove I'm right."

I could be wrong.

  > ... your phrasing may have come across as dismissive ...

OK, noted, thanks. I'll bear that in mind.

This brings new meaning to the expression "don't sell yourself short".

From their FAQ: "You are not required to enter your academic login. You can enter your courses into our system manually and you can verify your grades by mailing us your official transcript."

I don't know how these transcripts look like in the US, but it seems like here's a loophole for fraud.

Official transcripts are mailed by the school, not by the student, and are somewhat difficult to spoof.

Aren't we missing the point? Grades aren't what's important - learning is. Until the school system gives people real motivation (i.e. not just saying "do this, and we'll give you an A"), we're not going to make any progress in getting more capable graduates / citizens.

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