Comments on: Computers and grandmother mortality rates

By: William Sjostrom

William Sjostrom — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 23:42:46 +0000

I am reminded of the Michigan State professor whose student asked to be excused from the exam because his father had just died. The professor agreed without fuss, and then sent a consolation note to the student’s mother. It transpired that the student’s father had not in fact died, and the punishment the student received from his parents far exceeded anything a professor could hand out.

By: Morrighan

Morrighan — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 02:08:42 +0000

As a college student myself, I would suggest that the data is skewed. Grannies die at a constant rate, however, college professors are only aware of the deaths immediately preceding exams, because students have little incentive to inform them about deaths at other times. Similarly, computer errors (crashes, viruses, etc) happen frequently, but college professors are unlikely to hear about those that do not affect a soon-to-be-due paper. Additionally, I would agree with the previous student that we are generally harder on our computers while working to finish big projects, further increasing the chances that profs will hear about (and subsequently complain about) crashes and the like.

By: belle waring

belle waring — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 23:59:18 +0000

you need to be careful joking about this sort of thing sometimes. both my grandmothers died during the same 4 month period (i.e. one semester for my brother at law school) and his prof singled him out for skeptical opprobrium, though not by name, in an exam-time lecture. my brother was more than a little irritated, having been close to both grandmothers and having had to go to two funerals 1500 miles apart in his first semester at Penn…

By: neil

neil — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:40:11 +0000

This reminded me that in high school, I was pulled out of my calculus final to receive the news that my grandfather had unexpectedly passed away. But I finished the test (the teacher did give me the option of not doing so) having been one of those kids who found serenity in doing math.

By: student

student — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 19:45:44 +0000

Another possibility is that computers DO crash more before big assignments. Generally, students spend much more time using their computers right before an assignment, and such activities, like 36 hours of typing on a computer, or frequent switching between different programs, etc. is much more likely to make the computer crash than normal usage. I, as a college student, have noticed this phenomenon in both my computer and those of my friends: generally the harder we are on our computers, the more likely they are to crash, and we are most hard on our computers when we are working frantically to meet deadlines.

By: ogmb

ogmb — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 17:41:34 +0000

An alternative explanation is that elderly relatives die all the time but it’s only during exam season that students pay attention.

By: brayden

brayden — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 17:18:53 +0000

Another possibility is that students generally lack good time or crisis management skills and this becomes amplified when finals time arrives. The panic and stress associated with the end of the semester seems to make some students more incompetent than usual – they become incapable of dealing with regular, everday problems when running on stressed-out finals mode. Thus, dealing with a frozen computer may end up freezing the other events in their lives too.