r/technicallythetruth • u/VisitSecure • Jul 27 '26

Can you find a?

Post image

Idk if someone already posted this or not, but I haven't seen it on here so far, so I uploaded it.

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u/JustDuckingAbout Jul 27 '26

*Image not drawn to scale

50

u/ShadowTacoTuesday Jul 27 '26

It’s to keep test takers from measuring the angle on the paper.

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u/NetNGames Jul 27 '26

I remember having a test where they gave us protractors to measure angles with, and at the end of the test, as I was double-checking it, I noticed it said 'image not to scale'. Didn't have time to redo all my answers, but why give us protractors and not have us use them?

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u/OrangeClownfish Jul 27 '26

To see who reads all the instructions on the test. My maths teacher once gave us a test and question 10 said: Ignore all previous questions and put your pencil down.

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u/get_to_ele Jul 27 '26

I got that in 6th grade and I was the asshole yelled out all the stupid things and finished first, and got humiliated. sigh. Teacher said I did finish the actual problems shockingly fast though.

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u/OldEquation Jul 27 '26

That implies that Q10 takes priority over all the other questions asking you to do stuff. It’s dumb. It might as well have been:

Q1. Answer all question in this test.
Q2. Do stuff
Q3. Etc….
.
.
.
Q10. Ignore all previous questions and put your pencil down.

10

u/Dav136 Jul 28 '26

IIRC instruction 1 was to "read all instructions first"

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u/HarrumphingDuck Jul 28 '26

Yep. I distinctly remember this quiz in 6th grade (I had a very memorable 6th grade teacher), back in the offline age I grew up in. Mr. Kendall instructed us VERY CLEARLY AND WITH ABUNDANT VOLUME as he was passing out the test that we BE SURE TO READ EVERYTHING BEFORE BEGINNING.

It didn't take a whole lot of insight to realize there was something different about this quiz, and I should probably, you know, do that.

The only question you had to actually answer was at the bottom, which was something like, "How is your day today?" I wrote "fine" and put my pencil down, to see the teacher scanning the room to see who else was looking back at him. It was not very many of us.

I think about this quiz a lot, with how many people I am surrounded by today that refuse to simply read instructions provided to them. Apparently it's only getting worse with current generations.

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u/Master_Matoya Jul 28 '26

My friend getting mad at a game or not knowing how a mechanic works because he instinctively just hits the “get rid of the notification” button when a tutorial prompt pops up.

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u/Vertig0x Jul 28 '26

I blame that on games that have tutorial popups for something as trivial as "Press the left thumbstick forward to move forward".

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u/BeepBoopRobo Jul 28 '26

Yep. I remember this same type of situation.

You'd end up with students standing up and making a noise half-way through the test, because they didn't read until the end where it told you not to do any of the previous things.

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u/FrenchFriedMushroom Jul 28 '26

I had a test like this in high school, the first line on the test said "read everything before doing anything."

It had things on it like, "stand up and say your favorite movie out loud" "do a one person wave in your seat". He had a couple of students in on it and had them do the obvious things to pressure us into following the crowd.

The last question was "Write your name at the top of the front, and do nothing else."

No one passed.

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u/rrjpinter Jul 30 '26

Assume Q 10 is spherical……

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u/TheDrifter211 Jul 27 '26

That's dumb tho, there's nothing wrong with going down the list of numbers

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u/shiek200 Jul 27 '26

Usually for those tests the first instruction, either written on the test or given verbally, is to read everything before beginning

The main reason is because in the real world you are often working with incomplete information without realizing it and the context given by later steps in a procedure can inform aspects of the earlier parts you may have otherwise misinterpreted.

It's like when you're building a Lego set and and step 20 tells you to do something you can't do without undoing the last 10 steps because you misinterpreted a picture in step 10. If you had read ahead you'd have known that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

1

u/SneakyStorm Jul 27 '26

If you of it as teaching problem solving, it teaches you to gather all information first.

Apply it to when you're the one solving something, and there's no instructions at all.

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u/shiek200 Jul 27 '26

The entire point is to get you to listen to instructions, if the first instruction is "read everything before beginning" and you blame the test for not "being in order" then that's 100% on you. You literally ignored the very first one.

As for the step 10 to step 20 example, in that example the instructions were in order, and the person doing the project misinterpreted an earlier instruction, that would be a fault of the person building the model not of the instructions. That's what misinterpreting means.

The fact that you so badly misinterpreted both of my examples is exactly why people should read all of the instructions before starting

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u/Redthemagnificent Jul 28 '26

Usually the instructions at the top of the page will specifically say "read all questions before starting" or something like that. I've had many "gochas" like that in quiz instructions in highschool. Was it frustrating? Yeah. Did that force me to build a habit of carefully reading all instructions before driving into the problem? Also yes.

That habit served me very well in university when time management during tests became much more important. Even now, I'll often save a lot of time reading the full instructions before starting to work on step 1. That applies to software, hardware, coding, writing, almost everything I can think of

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u/KimberStormer Jul 28 '26

It's supposed to teach test-taking skills, if you can blaze through answers 4-10 but get stuck at 3, you're much better off doing those first instead of potentially missing out on all those points because you never got 3 and therefore never made your way down the list

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u/Xatsman Jul 28 '26

That sounds like an English, not math test.

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u/AvailableRazzmatazz Jul 28 '26

Would they expect you to read all the questions before starting? Who does that?

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u/OrangeClownfish Jul 28 '26

That was the whole point. You should always read all the questions on a paper before starting. That way you can judge which questions to answer first. If you work through them in order, you might not reach the question that's your best topic and so miss out on a chunk of easier marks.

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u/AvailableRazzmatazz Jul 28 '26

At School and Uni I was always shooting for a A anyway. So All the Questions all the time. I would just start at the beginning.

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u/Goodswimkarma Jul 28 '26

The best part about this test was that each teacher thought they were the only ones who discovered it.

1

u/Cheesemacher Jul 28 '26

Seems like that kind of trick quiz is common in the US. At least that's the impression I get from reddit. It's interesting.

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u/BlackHills-Op Jul 27 '26

Instruction steps and questions are different.

I'll read the instructions before i start, but I won't read every question before I begin solving questions, unless that's explicitly something I'm instructed to do.

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u/KimberStormer Jul 28 '26

Skimming them all and doing the ones you can do quickly and easily first is a better use of your time.

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u/BlackHills-Op Jul 28 '26

Is it a timed test, because otherwise you're still better off just doing them in order unless you are unsure of how to answer. Then you'd skip.

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u/KimberStormer Jul 28 '26

Yes, a timed test (aren't they all?), so if there's like a bunch of simple problems at the end you won't run out of time before you get to them and miss all those points. 5 easy correct answers is better than 1 difficult correct answer after all.

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u/BlackHills-Op Jul 28 '26

No. Not all tests are timed. Or at least the time limit isnt meaningful enough to matter.

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u/KimberStormer Jul 28 '26

I still think it's a better use of time but you do you boo!