All about timing…more than could be said for the Keele Clock House clock back then
I had been approached by some FY (Foundation Year) students at the end of the autumn term who said that they would have preferred FY exams to be at the end of the term being examined rather than the first Friday of the new term. Those students suggested that they thought that the majority would agree with them.
I put the matter to Professor Watson Fuller, the head of the physics department and Chair of FY Committee, who agreed with me that I should do a survey of the students to ascertain their views on this. He would support a change if a clear majority wanted a change.
Annalisa de Mercur, who was Academic Secretary that year, worked with me on a simple survey. We considered using this as an opportunity to ask other questions, but decided in the end to focus on the single question, with a binary choice, plus room for comments.
Annalisa recalled that the first FY lecture of the spring term was a crowd puller with maximum attendance and thus a suitable time and space for us to maximise “voting turnout”. I am pretty sure it was Eddie Slade himself (also Physics, then Senior Tutor also) delivering the lecture and I am pretty sure he gave our survey a good plug. We had left a form on each seat in the packed FY lecture theatre.
In truth I cannot remember what the lecture was about. Perhaps it was cosmology or perhaps it was atomic physics. Something to do with one sort of big bang or another, I shouldn’t wonder…possibly both sorts.
Annalisa and I were focussed on guarding the doors and, between us, getting as many people as possible to vote. If I remember correctly, some 95% of the FY students turned up to that lecture and some 95% of attendees voted, making our turnout around 90% of all FY students.
I also recall that the interval between that lecture and the next FY Committee meeting was very short and that the deadline for papers was actually the Friday before the lecture. I agreed with Watson Fuller that I would write a short method paper to meet the committee papers deadline, and table the results of the survey itself on the day of the meeting.
The vote was, as I recall it, roughly 70% preferring to keep things as they were, with some 30% of FY students preferring to get the exams out of the way before the holidays.
Mercifully, I didn’t need to dig out my (at that time, probably quite rusty) notes on statistical significance tests, as a 70%/30% vote with the “sample” comprising some 90% of the entire population being sampled is, in technical statistical terms, “a slam dunk”. I also summarised for each side of the case the three or four most commonly stated (and main) points that came from the comments. Some people would prefer to be examined while the material was fresh in their minds and to get the exams out of the way – most wanted to use some of their holiday time to revise (or “vise”, I should imagine, if they were anything like me in the matter of FY lecture attendance).
At the meeting, Professor Fuller heaped this tiny piece of research with glowing praise, admiring our method – in particular the decision to keep the survey focussed and simple, the attention to detail in maximising the size of the sample and the clarity with which we expressed our findings.
So fulsome was he with his praise, I thought he might be taking the piss, but I was told by several academics afterwards that Watson Fuller would have been completely sincere when saying those things. He certainly repeated them at the Senate meeting when that point came up in the FY Committee report.
I have spent a fair chunk of my working life making a living out of operational research and statistics – some of it award-winning and much of it quite sophisticated stuff using machine learning…
…yet I cannot ever remember a piece of my statistical work being heaped with such lavish praise as Professor Fuller’s fulsome praise of that January 1985 FY Committee paper on exam timings.
It was only my appointments diary that reminded me about that research interlude; my personal diary was relatively bland over that period. For the sake of completist readers (or more likely just for my own benefit) here is a transcript of those days:
Monday, 7 January 1985 – Not very productive day – stayed in and had early night.
Tuesday, 8 January 1985 – Got quite a lot done today. Played trivial pursuit at Pady’s in evening.
Wednesday, 9 January 1985 – Not terribly productive day. Petra came over in the evening and stayed.
Thursday, 10 January 1985 – Didn’t get much done today – went out for meal (UC) for Pady’s birthday to Micky’s.
Friday 11 January 1985 – Got lots done in morning – Union Committee in afternoon (chaotic). Staff party in evening – few showed – very unpleasant day.
Saturday, 12 January 1985 – Really low today. Went shopping. Moped around all day. Petra came over late evening. [That must have been fun for Petra judging by my description of my mood!]
Sunday, 13 January 1985 – Stayed in bed virtually all day. Went over to Kate’s for dinner in evening.
Monday 14 January 1985 – Very busy in office today. First real day of term. Stayed in the evening.
Tuesday 15 January 1985 – Lots on today – rushed a bit. Stayed in in evening – Petra came over.
Wednesday, 16 January 1985 – Senate etc today – lots to do. Opened Real Ale bar – did disco with John [White] – got v drunk.
Thursday, 17 January 1985 – Lots on today – including FY committee. Busy evening – Petra came over later on – cooked meal etc.
After all we had been through in the matter of the bar managers in the first half of our year, opening the new real ale bar (i.e. converting the Ballroom Bar into a real ale specialising bar) felt like a positive new beginning.
During our grand opening and disco, no doubt John sank several pints of Pedigree. I might have focussed on the Banks’s Mild but probably partook of both.
Ironically, I can no longer drink beer at all – as I worked my way through my forties I became completely intolerant to it. Still, better to have been able to drink the real ale back in my Keele days, when I was best placed to appreciate it. As with the FY exams question, I believe I got my timings right!
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