Ambiguous Exam Questions/Marking Schemes

What are some of the most ambiguous questions you've gotten in exams/assignments?

I once got one that asks why two objects of different sizes and mass fall at different speeds. The answer was "wind resistance" because due to the mass of the earth being so large that the difference in speed due to mass would be negligible.
However as they didn't actually say it was on earth I assumed it was two objects of different masses falling towards an object of higher but not a lot higher mass. So I said that the acceleration due to gravity is determined by the difference between the mass of the objects which are falling towards each other. I didn't get the mark because I wasnt meant to 'think that far'. It was complete bs! There was nothing wrong with my answer and I lost marks for thinking outside the box!

There was another assignment question where I was asked to write up an experiment and it stated "you may include a table of results" I MAY include a table! That means I bloody well don't have to to get the full marks!!

I'd like to reassure you, but that's a really weird assumption to make.

Keep in mind in future if any professor or teacher 'suggests' or 'mentions' anything, it's going to come back to haunt you. They leave the vagueness in to reassure them that they aren't throwing answers away.

The essay questions from any AP exam are by far the most ambiguous I've seen. Here are the AP Bio essay questions I had on my exam. They have their own code that you have to learn to translate to even answer the question. Ambiguous questions are move and more common the higher the education level. Once you hit university/college level, you're lucky if the question directly tells you everything you need up front. =/

The table part was suggesting you format your expected results in a table, but you had to have them somewhere.

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Originally Posted by rubah

I'd like to reassure you, but that's a really weird assumption to make.

Keep in mind in future if any professor or teacher 'suggests' or 'mentions' anything, it's going to come back to haunt you. They leave the vagueness in to reassure them that they aren't throwing answers away.

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I think the fact that they continually force upon us how acceleration due to gravity on earth is the same for 'all' objects that assuming this question which asks us why acceleration is different would apply outside earth is a logical assumption. Or atleast I thought there was a massive object close to the size of earth like the moon falling compared with say a marble falling to earth. The main problem was that there were no marks for my answer despite the fact that it is correct and full marks for the wind resistance answer which in my opinion is either not as correct or should have both answers required for full marks.

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Originally Posted by qwertyxsora

The table part was suggesting you format your expected results in a table, but you had to have them somewhere.

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They had a list of things to include, results was not on that list! If you want something you have to ask for it! We were told not to do the experiment just make a write up for it which i found perplexing when they asked for results

Ahh... This reminds me of a simpler time when I had a sadistic English teacher who I always loved to be a smart-ass around.

Luckily, it was English and not math. This of course lead to a greater deal of essay questions than I've ever seen in any math class. Whenever I could, I squeezed her questions for any small trace of ambiguity so that I could answer her questions with answers that were as far as the answer that she wanted as possible, without being incorrect.

I'd take that class over if I could, just because I had so much fun being a pain in her ass.