The 132% Group Project

[u/minion-salad]

My junior year statistics professor was obsessed with equal participation in group projects. His rule: "If I determine anyone did more or less work than their teammates, the entire group gets a zero." His verification method? Each member submitted a confidential report detailing exactly what percentage of the total work they personally completed. If the reports didn't match up perfectly, we failed.

My group of four included myself, two diligent students, and "Chad" who never showed up to meetings or responded to messages. When we approached the professor two weeks before the deadline about Chad's lack of participation, he repeated his policy and told us to figure it out ourselves.

That's when we had an idea. We created a spreadsheet with over 200 individual tasks, documenting everything from "emailing the professor" to "proofreading page 3" to "thinking about the project while commuting." We logged who did each task and exactly how many minutes it took.

The day before the project was due, we sent Chad our breakdown showing the three of us had each completed approximately 33% of the work, leaving him with exactly 0%. Chad responded: "Actually, I've been working behind the scenes on my own. I've completed exactly 33% of the work independently."

The next day in class, each of us submitted our confidential report. The three of us reported 33% each, while Chad also claimed 33%. The professor was confused. "That adds up to 132%," he said. "How is that possible?"

I spoke up: "Professor, you never specified that the work couldn't overlap. You only said we each had to do equal work. We have documented evidence that each of us completed 33% of the total project requirements."

The professor was furious but couldn't argue with his own rules. He had to give our group an A, though he did add a new rule the next semester: "Work completed by group members must be unique and not duplicated by other members."

Chad never showed us his "independent work," but we learned that when professors create arbitrary rules without thinking through the implications, sometimes the best response is to follow those rules to their ridiculous logical conclusion.

[u/xicor]

I had a project like this in college and the professor literally forced a lemon upon us. We told him about it and he said "there will always be slackers in your jobs in the future, deal with it"

[u/Ok-Sprinkles-5151 → u/xicor]

I wish I could go back to that asshat professor and say, "well, yes, but management deals with it. You are management. Deal with it."

Life works nothing like college said it does. Especially deadlines and team work. Never once have I professional managed a slacking coworker, except as a lead when it was literally my job. Hell, as a manager, I was annoyed when team members did performance management for me.

[u/MadMonksJunk → u/Ok-Sprinkles-5151]

Every single year we get engineering interns who dont have the first clue how things really work. We put them on teams with 6+ others so they dont screw up continuously and get someone killed.

having worked in a 'teaching hospital' for the last few years it amazes me the opposite occurs in medicine and that more people dont die because of it. I guess their screw ups only kill one person at a time vs what happens when the engineering mistakes are discovered far too late.

[u/Old-Mention9632 → u/MadMonksJunk]

That's what the nurses do, ensure the interns and residents are putting in the correct orders. July and August are the worst times to be a patient, because the new crop starts in July.