The responsibility part is just one element influencing the result.
"You may bring one 8.5x11 double-sided cheat sheet into the exam. You may write anything you want on it. And I promise you that if you prepare such a sheet, you'll never even look at it during the exam."
And he was right.
No, it doesn't. Repeating it ad infinitum does that.
But therefore it's a good thing grades aren't just pass or fail, but have a range, from 1 to 10, or to 20 or whatever. Too bad there's so much external pressure on the system.
Take a moment to think about it. Why does the confidence interval go smaller with more samples? What does it say about the impact of luck in repeated tests?
If it's a well-designed course it should be clear what the content of the exam will be. If not, it's the professor's fault. And barring rare emergencies being rested on the day is also generally a matter of preparation, not luck.
> barring rare emergencies
It doesn't have to be a rare emergency. Things happen, loud student parties happen, random bad nights happen.
In the case of calculus as an example, there should be nothing from the class you didn't have time to practice sufficiently. A full academic year is more than enough time to learn integrals, derivatives, sequences, and series with the small collection of tricks for solving difficult problems (telescoping series, trig sub, etc.) There's a couple dozen rules you learn that are straightforward to apply, and for the times they aren't obvious, there's like a dozen total tricks (trig sub, etc.).
I took these classes. I remember how most people just phoned in the entire thing and complained at the exam review sessions how hard everything was.
It's the simplest of memorization.