anyone unlocked the key to this idiotic class? our test on the syllabus full of trick questions should've been my first tip off not to take it.

9/23/2007 11:15:48 PM

It's not too late to drop.

9/23/2007 11:46:25 PM

edit: Yeah he's nuts. Drop it as fast as you can.

[Edited on September 23, 2007 at 11:46 PM. Reason : ]

9/23/2007 11:46:31 PM

I would also be very happy if you would change your webpage so it doesn't automatically resize my browser. That pisses me off to no end.

9/23/2007 11:47:40 PM

ive unlocked the key. just bullshit everything. I failed all my exams in here and got a 7 microsum, skipped the intuition inventory and still got a B-

9/24/2007 12:42:38 AM

i got an A+ in that class.

i went to maybe 1/3 of the lectures.

i could have gone to none, but the guy amused me somewhat.

and the "key" is called CTRL-F




[Edited on September 24, 2007 at 1:50 AM. Reason : ]

9/24/2007 1:49:59 AM

if that wasn't a bunch of mixed answers... i think im going to ask around today in class. it blows pretty hard though. even ctrl+f doesnt help you on most of these answers. he purposely words them to be deceptive.

oh yeah and so sorry to upset your delicate sensibility CharlesHF, but it's a design website, get serious. let me go change the whole thing to appease you-

9/24/2007 9:18:08 AM

i'm assuming he just curves insanely at the end?

9/24/2007 9:35:41 AM

Is Austin still teaching it? I took it 3 years ago long enough to take the first test and decide I didn't want to have to deal with that for the rest of the semester. I liked him as a guy - he was pretty funny - but there were some test questions where I'd read them and find logical reasoning behind different answers, so at that point it was pretty much guessing which one he wanted.

From what I've gathered, pretty much everyone fails/does poorly on the tests and still comes out with a decent grade. I kind of wish I'd stayed in it and just put up with the bs.

9/24/2007 10:12:18 AM

that class is very retarded. Drop it now while you still can.

9/24/2007 10:34:06 AM

Eeasy A, just actually do all the assignments. The curve is massive and the material is interesting if you actually go to the lectures, but you can get an A easily enough without ever going to class.

9/24/2007 10:54:11 AM

Just search man

you aren't the first to be spazzed out -- I did it though, get what you think will be a D and it'll be at least a B

9/24/2007 11:16:25 AM

Quote :

"oh yeah and so sorry to upset your delicate sensibility CharlesHF, but it's a design website, get serious. let me go change the whole thing to appease you-"

its not THAT big of a deal but i do agree with CharlesHF. Part of design of an interactive product is ease of use and having to manually resize the browser back down after the intro page was a little annoying.

9/24/2007 11:42:06 AM

if you are having such difficulty with the questions, as some do seem to be worded a little oddly, then may I suggest getting together with a few classmates, as his tests are open-website, open-note, open-book

9/24/2007 12:50:51 PM

Quote :

"i got an A+ in that class. i went to maybe 1/3 of the lectures. i could have gone to none, but the guy amused me somewhat. and the "key" is called CTRL-F"

9/24/2007 1:28:47 PM

thanks, you guys have been a big help. for the most part.

9/24/2007 3:55:40 PM

Quote :

"i'm assuming he just curves insanely at the end?"

no wonder you did shitty on the syllabus quiz... you obviously didn't even look at it. The grade conversion is right on it and multi-colored.

9/24/2007 5:16:04 PM

Philosophers have rarely if ever offered anything constructive, why should PHI 340 be any different ?

9/24/2007 5:29:43 PM

yeah, that Descartes dude was a fuckoff.

9/24/2007 5:31:57 PM

I think therefore I am.

Gee how profound.

Maybe you get warm fuzzy feelings about questioning your existence, I get a different sort of feeling.
Why even discuss existence with others if you doubt your own? To me it seems like the death of rational thought. How many discussions have been hopelessly sidetracked by individuals demanding incontravertible proof. In my opinion this is at least partially due to the inane standard of proof that Descartes demanded. Doubting your own existence is not smart, its the height of stupidity. And as I complained before, it is not constructive.

now maybe you know of examples where philosophy has been constructive. By this I mean not "proving" that something was wrong and/or flawed. Rather a result which adds to what we know to a reasonable certainty.

I can think of one such result, Godel's work. But, he was a mathematician, go figure.

9/24/2007 7:54:40 PM

find old tests


he never changes them

9/24/2007 10:47:09 PM

^^yeh, everyone loves to keep copies of old tests, especially from a class which many seem to loathe

9/24/2007 10:52:37 PM

all i'm saying is that it's out there, and they are useful in figuring his tests out

9/24/2007 10:54:25 PM

all of his tests are online though, i guess someone may have printed them out or saved the source

9/25/2007 12:44:03 AM

Quote :

"I think therefore I am. Gee how profound."

wait a minute...

you call yourself mathman, yet you think that sums up Descartes' contribution?

9/25/2007 1:32:53 AM

we were discussing philosophy, I was addressing his most famous philosophical contribution, I never said that was all he did. I do think calling him the "father of modern mathematics" is a bit much...

ok that's as far as I'm chasing this rabbit... lets get back to bashing PHI 340.

9/25/2007 9:33:05 AM

with pleasure

9/25/2007 11:25:26 AM

The key is, read the question. Then read the source. Answer based one source and profit. They actually aren't that tricky if you are careful with the wording of source and question.

9/25/2007 12:19:10 PM

I swear to God, every semster...

http://www.thewolfweb.com/school_course.aspx?department=PHI&coursenumber=340

Quote :

"The only material is the professor's stupid ramblings. Nothing but multiple-choice tests full of trick questions where the "right" answers are what he wants to hear."

9/25/2007 4:08:50 PM

yeah, i dont remember a damn thing from that class, other than "Professor Austin is not a Dualist"

but hell if 4.33 Grade Points for a 3 CR class didnt help my overall GPA

9/25/2007 6:30:27 PM

Quote :

"and the "key" is called CTRL-F"

9/26/2007 3:01:22 PM

i read nothing but wanted to say....THIS THREAD AGAIN!!!

[Edited on September 26, 2007 at 5:15 PM. Reason : i just said meh and halfassed most of it and got a B. material was interesting at least.]

9/26/2007 5:09:22 PM

Well Austin seems relatively young, I'd guess this thread will continue be reincarnated every semester until he retires or stops teaching PHI 340, could be a decade or two, better get used to it.

9/27/2007 12:04:02 AM

Austin ain't young. Dude's gray.

9/27/2007 1:01:38 AM

^ gray? damn, he must 90

your boy cant be much older than 55-60

9/27/2007 11:09:20 AM

Just took the test-hard as hell and drove me crazy in trying to find any answers at all. Questions were were worded in ways that basically made no sense. I just guessed a lot. It took me over 2 hours. I just couldn't look at it anymore. You'll see what I mean. It's pure hell and sheer madness

9/28/2007 2:25:34 AM

took the exam last night. between me and my gf crtl-Fing everything for about an hour and half, i was able to confidently answer 5-7. guessed the rest. =(

9/28/2007 10:40:29 AM

That's nothing. I used to spend about 6 hours on each test. I'd never read any of the material beforehand. Those three days sucked, but three 6 hour days for an easy A was well worth it.

9/28/2007 10:47:22 AM

is it just me, or does dr austin seem to have an inordinate fondess for false?

9/28/2007 11:00:52 AM

anyone wants to get together on this thing today, msg me

9/28/2007 11:41:57 AM

I'ma give yall a hint.

take all of his webpages of notes, for the material being covered, and combine them into one super-huge HTML file on your local drive.

for the final, you'll have every single webpage concatenated into one file

CTRL-F

CTRL-F

CTRL-F

CTRL-F



how hard is this?

10/1/2007 1:31:13 AM

how hard could it be that everybody is failing it?

someone post examples of the kinds of questions he asks.

10/1/2007 8:30:24 PM

They are pretty tough if you haven't read the material but with a take home test ~ 20 pt curve it shouldn't be too bad.

10/1/2007 10:33:25 PM

77=a-

10/1/2007 11:08:04 PM

KEYS TO MAKING AN A: DONT GO TO CLASS, GET OLD EXAMS... MAKE SURE YOU TAKE THE CLASS THE 2ND TIME HE TEACHES IT AFTER REMAKING QUESTIONS ON EXAMS...THE EXAMS ARE THE SAME EVERY 2 YEARS

10/2/2007 10:09:00 PM

If you're going to guess, guess false. This will give you 70%-90% of the T/F questions, say 9 out of the 12 (if 75% are false, which is a pretty safe bet). Then randomly guess the others for ~25% of 13, or 3 if you're slightly unlucky. Randomly guess the T/F microquizzes. Now you have 41.72 points. Read the syllabus and get a 50 on the quiz (well below average), do both intuition inventories (not graded) and guess randomly on the dualism quiz, for a total of 9.5 more points. You now have 51.32=51 points which is a C-. This means you have a ~50% chance of passing (increasing rapidly with each additional lucky guess or worked answer) without learning a single thing about the philosophy of science. Your GPA will take a hit but hey, you didn't really do any work.

Or you could spend a couple hours on the day of the test reading the material and get an A, still spending a only fraction of the time you would spend in almost any other class. If you actually read the material and think about the questions, the answers are not arbitrary (nor are they just Austin's opinion).

If you dislike the format because it seems like the instructor doesn't have to do much work, your priorities are totally wrong. If you want to understand the material and you like listening to a professor drone on about stuff you could easily read at your convenience, then drop and find a class that better meets your needs (if there isn't one I guess you're SOL, sorry). If you have any self motivation at all or just want a good grade with very little time or effort, quit yer bitchin'. If you can think, this is not a hard class.

10/3/2007 3:44:39 PM

AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA

Took this my very first semester fresh year. Everytime I see people ask about it I laugh about the hell they're about to go through.

10/9/2007 10:41:20 PM

If Austin is still teaching it... FIND THE OLD TESTS... I know they're out there ... I had them in 2003 and literally didn't attend ONE class and got an A+.

It IS 4 years later now.. so he might have changed the tests around.

(NO I DON"T STILL HAVE THE OLD TESTS OR KNOW ANYONE WHO DOES)

10/9/2007 11:46:24 PM

jesus christ. every single semester someone complains about this class.

IF YOU PEOPLE HAD THE CAPACITY TO STOP AND THINK ABOUT THE QUESTIONS LOGICALLY, YOU WOULD DO FINE.

one of my favorite classes at NCSU.

10/15/2007 9:59:47 AM