I think it's time for a highly-anticipated
second video about the homework
assignments
and I’d like to talk about homework
assignment number two what went well and
what didn't go so well in there what
went well is obviously the assignment itself the grades are good and  I’m pretty confident now that
all of you can solve the problem of
calculating the force due to pressure on
a flat plate so congratulations for
this and on submitting all those
assignments it is still a pleasure now
working on this with you HOWEVER I also
have to talk about the bad things
because that's part of the job and I
must say while the assignments themselves
were really good the quality of the
gradings was very low I did a first
casual check at first and then ended up
going through more than half of the
assignments overall (of the gradings on
those assignments) and found many
problems with the quality of the grading
and those problems were mostly fixed
I contacted many peers individually to
discuss the grading and explained what
was wrong and to fix it
I think most of the problems were solved
some peers however are no longer in the
homework program and some peers were
just disqualified from this homework
assignment I think most of the problems are fixed now so what went wrong what is the
issue? well several times the issue is of
three kinds
the first kind of grading problem is
when all points are given for the
general expression but the general
expression is not there it's nowhere
written inside the paper and this is a
major problem
second problem is when the general
expression is there but contains
secret language terms there are nowhere
defined inside the paper secret language
terms like L2max Zmin Zmax
R2 R3 and things like this nowhere
defined and nevertheless the peers give full points saying that there is a general
expression so it must be fine
the third kind of problem I see is when
the result is wrong and the peers have
noticed this but then the peers just
remove arbitrarily a few points in the
final rubric without questioning what
the source of the problem is without
identifying exactly where the error
originated and so I'm not happy about
this I think the reason for those
problems is that there are two instincts
that we follow as peers and those instincts are
first to think that grading which means
identifying the exact problem splitting
the grade into rubrics in giving the
right number of points in every rubric
this is a very academic work
sounds like the job of a teacher not the job
of an engineer so why should engineering
students partake in this?
I understand that feeling. Second
feeling/instinct is to think you want to
be nice to the peers
"I see somebody else's work here it's
important they put a lot of effort into
this I don't want to remove too many
points from this I want to not ruin
their day to not ruin their average
grade in fluid mechanics I want to be
as nice as possible to encourage them
and to be friendly" and my argument is
that you need to refrain from following
those two instincts if you don't believe
me ask Boeing Boeing is an airplane
manufacturer designed a few years back
the best-selling airplane in history
designed it sold it launched it and it
turned out there's an error in the
software on this airplane that makes it
plunge into the ground regardless of
what the pilots do in certain
circumstances and so a 300 people died
and the whole airplane fleet billions
of dollars worth of airplanes is
just grounded the airplane manufacturer the company is a
major financial trouble today
and you have the tragedy of 300
people losing their lives
why? not because of an error in the
stability software made by probably one
or two engineers but because of the
hundreds of other engineers who had the
opportunity to cross-check evaluate
review the work of their peers and
didn't because they were nice to one
another airplane engineers at
Boeing are buddies they're nice to one
another they don't want to hurt their
feelings they don't want to review
the work they don't want to find
mistakes and so this is what happens and
the same level of consequence will be
present in your work in just a few
months when you hit the ground on a power plant or a chemical company
so it is in fact the engineer's job to
review grade assess other people's work
to find exactly where the
errors are and what the nature of the
errors [is] so I want you to do a better
job at this you need to be excellent at
this job it's totally ok if you don't
have good grades in fluid mechanics it's
totally ok if the quality of your
assignments it is not perfect but you
cannot run away from the responsibility
you have towards your peers to
identify problems and great accordingly
great severely it needs to hurt when
there are bad mistakes if the force is
off by a factor 10 then the window will
burst and people will die and so there
needs to be consequences and you need to
take this grading job very seriously
you cannot run away from this if you do I
will find you and I will just yank you
out from the homework program ok so now
that I've gone through this I can
explain what the good were and
try to display hopefully on the side
of the screen here a couple of examples
of really good-quality work let me pause
for a second so I can just swap my notes
so we found two really really good
papers really good submissions this time
we thought we would attribute
the prize to a peer grader but in the
end the level of the peer grading was
not so good so we went back to giving
the prize for a homework assignment and
number two the runner-up who didn't
quite get the prize is Darshan and
Darshan did what is my friend and
colleague Jochen’s and my own favorite
paper Darshan's paper is extremely
straightforward it's pretty short
it's well typed and well illustrated in
what is a very basic style there's not
too much to worry about not too much to
look for everything you need is there
and nothing more and it would definitely be the best paper if there were, unfortunately,
not two big mistakes in there one is
okay it is taking the cosine instead of a
sine somewhere and the second error is a
major error it is pointing the force in
the wrong direction so the window is
mounted backwards
it will burst into the boat and boat will
sink so we just cannot give the best
prize —the best paper prize to Darshan
unfortunately I'm really sorry about
that the best prize goes to Srijith and Srijith, I hope that I'm not
mispronouncing your name Srijith you did
an excellent work detailing the solution
very neatly in a way that's really
actually better than my own solution to
the problem let's make space for a car
and congratulations here's for you as as
discussed before whohoo a 20 euro Gustchein
from Amazon as a recognition for your
excellent job in this assignment
now what to look for in the upcoming
assignments? we have two more going in
the coming month in the next assignment I
would like you to pay attention to
three things one is obviously a very clear
and very well identified general
expression for the answer
do not put secret language terms in
this general expression but instead
define it entirely based on the input
data for the problem so I do not want
any number I just want the symbols that
are given as the input parameters in the
answer the second thing I would like to
see in this upcoming assignment is
better diagrams a lot of you have very
nice diagrams there are full of
information that we don't need the
window on the side the angles Beta even
the little people some of you represented
again on diagrams I don't want to see
that a good diagram has the minimum
amount of information in there so every
symbol that you use should be there and
nothing else should be present in it
so make very clear diagrams on your
upcoming assignment and the last thing I
WANT to see in upcoming assignments is a
very high quality of grading from you
toward yourselves so that your peers are
held up very high standards and are able to progress and improve their skills to
become successful engineers so this is it
I wish you well and I will see you soon
in upcoming videos about fluid dynamics. Bye-bye.
