[peter303]

I recall for out PhD written exams we were allowed on leter-size cheat sheet.

The irony is the act of compiling such a sheet meant you temporarily memorized the information on the sheet and didnt really need the sheet.

[robotresearcher]

Not ironic. Instructors allow cheat sheets for this reason as much as for actually looking stuff up.

Instructors were students too. We don't forget.

[agumonkey]

I got that very early on. The dedication to craft cheating devices (even in primary schools) and cram information as densely as possible meant you had to read it a lot, categorize, prune and simplify it to the point you basically knew it backwards.

It failed in high school when I got a graphing calc capable of storing "large" corpus of text. You didn't have to think a lot (mostly careful typing) and it grew too large to even remember everything you typed in.

[yessertuto]

Do PhD students have written exams? I thought they did research and wrote papers? How can you write an exam to test a PhD student when they are the ones coming up with the knowledge in the area?

[honorious]

PhD students take classes, and some of them do have written exam (in CS theory more than other parts of CS). In the US, where the PhD is 5 years, you spent a good portion of the first 2 years taking classes.

Before coming up with new knowledge you need to know what's already out there.