[Agentlien]

I once (2010) had an oral exam in neural networks during which I had to design a system to solve a particular task. My solution used two neural networks connected by a simple logic circuit. The professor, who was actually a neuro scientist with little understanding of the technical, asked why not a third neural network. This was a neural network course, after all.

Thinking this was a trick question I excitedly explained how stupid it would be to build and train a network to approximate a function which could easily be precisely described with a tiny circuit or code statement.

The professor was not amused. He said that's what he would have done. After a few similar incidents he concluded the exam giving me an 8/10 saying my answers were perfectly correct but he didn't like my attitude.

[wodenokoto]

Yeah, there’s a better way of saying that and it sounds like that was an expensive lesson in communication.

“Something something, it’s better to spend training time on the parts of the network where we don’t know the function beforehand than to train a subnetwork to do a function that we do know exactly at the outset.” and still you need to be ready to be asked about how to backpropogate through your hard coded function.

[Dylan16807]

It's a test, you shouldn't have to sugar-coat explanations to an instructor (unless you're acting out some other scenario as part of the test).

[gchamonlive]

In a test you have to prove your knowledge by transmitting symbols through language. If you don't "sugar coat" it, how do you expect that the right symbols will be interpreted by the receiver? It is part of the test to use the appropriate language to ensure the best understanding of what you are saying. Nonviolent communication tries to do exactly that and is essential to this end.

You can argue that since the professor understood what was being said, the language shouldn't matter, but it does. If again you don't use the correct language you risk offending the listener so much he can't get past that. After all you are dealing with humans, not machines, and in either case you are responsible for clear communication.

[lldbg]

And the contrary view is that the professor has a pronounced responsibility to see past unfortunate framing and phrasing of intricate subject matter details. Both are worthwhile goals, I think.

[dr_zoidberg]

In my university there's a professor that has an awful attitude towards students when taking exam, outright making them feel stupid (without saying anything, just from gestures and body language)... The plot twist is he does this on purpose. Many times he'll just give a passing grade, but the experience of taking an exam with him is terrible.

[gchamonlive]

Don't get me wrong, I hate how university handles exposition and evaluation of subjects. It encourages exploitation of memorization and test solving techniques instead of focusing on the quality of the subject.

However, life is very rarely optimal or fair. The only effect we can productively have on the world is through how we approach it, instead of focusing energy on how our actions are interpreted. It is unfortunate, but that is the most logical outcome. Focus on yourself, not on others.

[Agentlien]

There's actually more to the story than what I intended to share to begin with.

I usually get along well with teachers and have enough tact to make do when I don't. But this person was such an extreme case. He was always grumpy, would regularly take several minutes out of lectures to call out and belittle any student who was late or he didn't think was paying attention. The only times he wasn't sour was when he was describing unethical and torturous experiments on animals. Then he was overly excited and giddy.

The exam was, as was common at that university, essentially an essay which was then reviewed by the examiner who would ask for any clarifications or push with further questions. This exam asked us to describe a system solving a fairly standard AI task using neural networks. My answer was a few pages split into a few sections: a brief overview of the whole system, followed by detailed descriptions of each part. Wherever I skipped details in the overview I'd written "(see p. X)". It took a bit of planning to get those numbers in there when writing that by hand with limited time.

When I finally gave the answer the professor skimmed through the overview and then proceeded to berate me for having neglected to write about some important detail. I politely pointed out that it was in the following section and that I'd included a page reference for things which I referred to before defining. He grumbled and kept skimming. After a while he complained about another thing he thought I really should have explained which was missing. I told him on which page he could find it and politely reminded him that he was reading the overview and that the details were in the next part.

This went on for a while and I got a bit more annoyed and a bit less polite each time, because it was getting ridiculous. After the tenth or so time I flat out told him that if he'd read past the overview, like I kept telling him, he'd find all the details there and if he didn't want to I'd be willing to describe any part of it orally but really, it is all there if he would just read it instead of complaining.

That's when he asked the question about a third network and I, still very frustrated, was relieved to get an actual question, and I was certain it was a trick question trying to get me to say I didn't think of it and then he'd call me an idiot and explain why it was unnecessary. I was really surprised it wasn't a trick and frankly a bit delighted at inadvertently insulting him.

When I told my wife (well, girlfriend at the time) she was a bit shocked that I'd been rude to a professor, but I didn't need those points and while it was very out of character for me I never regretted it.