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Monday, January 27, 2003

Multiple Choice Mania

Kramer Test: 1) any multiple choice test written by Craig Kramer, teacher of physics and biology at Bexley High School. 2) any test that is comprised largely of Kramer questions.

Kramer Question: a type of multiple choice question named after the aforementioned Mr. Kramer. While many teachers periodically make Kramer questions on their tests—thus making the need for a term such as “Kramer Question” evident—Kramer himself is the only one who does it so frequently and consistently. The most notable aspect of a Kramer question is that it is thoroughly unanswerable. Makes things tough, doesn’t it? There are two variants on this simple theme: either there are no correct answers, or there are multiple correct answers. Here is a typical Kramer question of the first variety:

What is 3 + 3?
A. 7
B. 6.1
C. 0
D. 3
E. 33

Notice how the correct answer, “6,” appears nowhere in the list of choices. The question “What is 3 + 3?” is actually a façade for the real, much tougher question, “What the hell does Kramer want?” More like a little puzzle, really—the answer you ultimately pick is based on the path of logic you choose to follow. Perhaps the correct answer is the one closest to the truth (B). Perhaps Kramer accidentally hit “7” instead of “6” when typing choice A (A). Perhaps he accidentally typed “+” instead of “-“ when typing the question itself (C). Perhaps it’s a trick question and you’re supposed to just put the 3’s together instead of obeying the laws of mathematics (E). Or maybe Kramer was just snorting cocaine at the time (D). All are valid possibilities. I’d go with B or D, but you can never know for sure—Kramer questions of the first variety are the hardest multiple choice problems in existence. Their second variety counterparts are slightly less impossible and could go as follows:

Which of the following animals is a mammal?
A. Shark
B. Whale
C. Snake
D. Frog
E. Human

Here we have a problem because at least two of the answers seem to work—whale and human. Heck, as far as I know, frogs are mammals, too, in addition to being amphibians. But if this were on a test, I would rule out choice D because it’s the most doubtful of the three possibilities. Determining between B and E is slightly more tricky. Once again we play the “what was Kramer thinking” game. Maybe he erroneously believes that whales are fish, which aren’t mammals—in that case he’d make Human the answer. But perhaps Kramer doesn’t count humans as “animals.” I mean, we’re smarter than, like, zebras, right? By that logic choice B wins. So which one is correct? B or E? Well, obviously, both—we are dealing with a Kramer question here, after all. But if you want to know which question would give you the point, I’d put my money on B, just because whales are definitely animals and mammals whereas humans are mammals but not necessarily animals. This is the kind of thinking in which you have to engage in order to conquer your average Kramer question.

***

Trotter Test: 1) any multiple choice test written by Dr. Ben Trotter, teacher of world religions, AP European History, and government & economics at Bexley High School. 2) any test that is comprised largely of Trotter questions.

Trotter Question: a type of multiple choice question that appears frequently on the tests of Dr. Ben Trotter, after whom it is named. Unlike Kramer questions, Trotter questions have one, correct answer. They are, however, nevertheless quite distinct from normal questions, and are infinitely more aggravating. Here is a normal question: “How many legs does a donkey have?” Now here is that same question in Trotter form: “Donkeys…” Yes, kids, that’s the whole thing right there—one word and an ellipsis. On a test it would look like this:

Donkeys…
A. have four legs
B. are the result of crossbreeding between a horse and an elephant
C. provide the milk that we drink
D. is slang Swahili for “buttface”
E. is the symbol of the Republican party

Notice how none of the choices have anything whatsoever to do with each other. This is typical of a Trotter question. Notice also how choice E doesn’t make anything remotely resembling grammatical sense—“Donkeys is the symbol of the Republican party” sounds like something Bush would say. Also typical. Generally you’d expect the answer and the question, when combined, to form some sort of logical sentence, as in “Donkeys have four legs,” but Dr. Trotter often arranges it—presumably on purpose to fool the people who didn’t study—so that the correct answer is among the grammatically senseless ones. Case in point: last year I got stuck, as it always seems to happen, between two answers on a government test. They both seemed to make sense logically, but only one made sense as a sentence. So I decided, after much deliberation, to make a stand for grammatical propriety. What a mistake that was. When we got the tests back, I asked Dr. Trotter, very nicely I thought, if it was possible, perhaps, in the future, to make sure that the choices all make at least a little bit of sense. I received the curt reply that grammar and syntax are irrelevant. So choice A in the preceding question could very easily have been “four legs belong to them,” in which case the end result would read “Donkeys four legs belong to them,” and regardless of the fact that a five year-old would drown himself in a fishbowl before writing such an awful sentence, “four legs belong to them” would still be the correct answer.

Now, the Trotter question I gave as an example was rather easy, because while you probably don’t know Swahili very well and are not in fact positive that “donkeys” doesn't mean “buttface,” you do know that donkeys four legs belong to them, and so you know that choice A is the way to go. But imagine if it were a question about European history. Imagine:

13) Humanists…
A. were staunch pioneers of the ad fontes approach towards studying ancient Latin texts
B. regarded Otto Von Bismarck as one of their principal enemies in light of his vicious attacks on multicultural postmodernism
C. one of their main goals was to synthesize the ideas of Wycliff and Hus in order to feed fuel to the fire of the popular piety movement that developed in the aftermath of the Catholic Counter-Reformation
D. I’m running out of obnoxious ideas
E. but I hope you get the point
F. by the way the correct answer is choice A

***

There you have it—four perfectly valid and accepted additions to the English language. Let’s spread them! When these two fine Bexley High School teachers—Trotter and Kramer—retire at long last, and then eventually die, because that seems to be a big fad these days, their names deserve to ring across the country for ages, in all sorts of random places:

Girl: hey, how was the English test?
Boy: well, aside from the fact that there were no right answers , it was fine.
Girl: oh, god. Just what I need—another Kramer test.

Student: as far as chemistry tests go, I thought that one was pretty easy except for question 37.
His Friend: was that the one that went, “Magnesium, dot dot dot?”
Student: yeah. Trotter questions are such a bitch.

.: posted by Boris 10:35 AM

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