[a1pulley]

Chinmay was a TA for CS38—the required algorithms class for the computer science major at Caltech. I saved that class for the final quarter of my senior year. After finishing my last exam, I drove up to the Eastern Sierra to hike Caltech Peak to celebrate my (presumed) graduation; I was gone for a few days. When I returned and checked my email, I saw that my CS38 exam had been graded but that I didn't yet have a grade for the class.

On problem 2, Chinmay underlined my use of the royal "we" and told me to report myself to the the Caltech honor code committee if I'd taken the take-home exam with anyone else. I got a good chuckle out of that one. I tanked that question—1 out of 6 points!—so I wondered whether he thought I was part of the dumbing cheating group in history.

[dghughes]

> On problem 2, Chinmay underlined my use of the royal "we"

I've heard that you can only use we if you are The Queen, an editor, or if you have a tapeworm.

[jakear]

My gut bacteria and I beg to differ! We have a grand old time working together to keep me conscious.

https://www.scientificanimations.com/how-gut-bacteria-impact...

[nirkhe]

Haha — Chinmay here. Oh goodness I remember this! What actually happened is that there were two sols. submitted that we’re similar enough that we were concerned about cheating — both used the royal “we”. And the weird part was that very few people used royal “we” on that problem. The two were not direct copies so we thought we should just ask the submitters to self report to BoC rather than deal with an official report.

Sorry if I insinuated you were cheating falsely!

[a1pulley]

No worries. I unfortunately had to make my own cheating accusations when I TA'd other classes...

Reading some of these old proofs is a little cringe-inducing. Masking cluelessness with the royal we doesn't work very well :-)

[selimthegrim]

You could leave it that long? I tried doing it freshman or sophomore year as a non major with predictable results.