Tales from the Classroom: The Fake Answers

Posted on April 1, 2004 @ 3:23 pm

Just in time for April Fools’ Day!

Coming up with good multiple choice questions for an exam isn’t that hard. The hard part is coming up with all the fake answers — you know, the multiple choice options that aren’t correct. On the one hand, you have to make sure that they’re not too good; in other words, you don’t want the fake answers to be close enough to correct that they confuse rather than test the students. On the other hand, they can’t be too ridiculous either, or the students will see straight through them to identify the correct answer whether they’ve studied or not.

There’s something to be said, however, for having a bit of fun with the fake answers. For instance, I had a history professor as an undergraduate that would often include a Frenchman by the name of Marquis de Loofru in the multiple choice answers on his exams. Marquis de Loofru…”de loofru”…”u r fooled.” Get it? I always got the impression that the professor derived a great deal of joy from the instances when students actually chose the Marquis as the correct answer on his exams. Then again, he also took great pleasure in doing his best HL Mencken impression when students said something less-than-correct in class, calling them “boobs” and “nincompoops” while grinning like a jackanapes. But, I digress.

Taking a cue from that professor, I realized early on that I needed a good running fake-answer gag when I began teaching — to entertain myself while writing and grading exams if nothing else. Eventually, I decided that my go-to fake answer was going to be…the Cone of Tragedy! I actually lifted the name from a broken-down carnival ride featured in an old computer game, figuring that it should be good for a few laughs. Before long, it was showing up as a potential answer in questions like this:

Which of the following metaphors is typically used to explain the logic involved in arms races?

1. Occam’s Razor
2. The Allegory of the Cave
3. The Prisoners’ Dilemma
4. The Cone of Tragedy
5. The Faustian Bargain

Eventually, the professor I worked with noticed that the Cone of Tragedy kept make repeat appearances on the exams. He asked about it, and I reluctantly explained the joke. Much to his credit and my surprise, he loved it and told me to keep using it. Before long, it became a competition between the two of us — who could come up with the most ludicrous way to work the Cone of Tragedy into our exams. Five years later, we both continue to mention the Cone whenever the opportunity presents itself. For instance, just last week, I asked my students on an exam to identify the mutually supportive networks that arise in U.S. government between bureaucratic agencies, interest groups, and legislative committees with jurisdiction over a particular issue or policy area. Most of them correctly chose “iron triangles” as the answer, but one student decided to go with “cones of tragedy” instead.

The story doesn’t end there, however. In recent months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching decision-making heuristics in international relations. In particular, I’ve been trying to determine why leaders insist on pursuing courses of action that they know are risky and unlikely to succeed when a rational individual would clearly do otherwise. It seems that in many cases, what happens is that the decision-maker starts out by making a bad decision and then continues to follow up that initial mistake with a series of further miscues in an attempt to “make things right,” ultimately sending things spiraling out of control. I’m at the point now in my research where I need a catchy name to describe this decision-making fallacy, and only one springs immediately to mind: the Cone of Tragedy.

I think it’s safe to say that I’ll win the competition with my mentor if I can successfully incorporate the Cone into a peer-reviewed journal article. Heck, if I keep it up maybe the Cone of Tragedy could even make the transition from fake answer to real answer one of these days.

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