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June 25, 2003

Flat Tyre

I'm sure this is an urban legend (or it ought to be) but given that Theepan sent it, I have to post it :-)

Last semester, there were four students, good friends, taking Object Oriented Programming.
They did very well on all their lab exercises, lab exams, assignments, and HD projects. Each student thought they'd get an HD. These four friends were so confident with the Multiple Choice Exam approaching that the weekend before, they decided to go down to Canberra and party with some friends there. They had a great time.
However, after all the hard partying, they slept all day Sunday and didn't make it back to Sydney until early Monday morning - the morning of their Multiple Choice exam!
Rather than taking the final then, they decided to find their lecturer AFTER the exam and explain to him why they missed it. They explained that they had gone to Canberra to do some research in the ANU archives for the weekend with the plan to come back in time to study, but unfortunately, they had a flat tyre on the way back, and that they couldn't get help for a long time. As a result, they only just arrived now!
The lecturer thought it over and then agreed they could make up their final exam the following day. The guys were elated and relieved. They studied hard that night - all night - and went in the next day at the time the lecturer had told them. He placed them in separate rooms and handed each of them a test booklet, (the exam was being marked out of 30) and told them to begin. The first question was worth one mark:

1. This question refers to method "swap", which is part of class "SelSort" (see attachments). The missing code from "swap" is:
(a) temp = x[j]; x[j] = x[i]; x[j] = temp;
(b) temp = x[j]; x[i] = x[j]; x[j] = temp;
(c) temp = x[i]; x[i] = x[j]; x[j] = temp;
(d) temp = x[i]; x[j] = x[i]; x[j] = temp;
(e) temp = x[i]; x[j] = x[i]; x[i] = temp;

Each quickly answered the first question, with the correct answer, "c". "Cool" they all thought in their separate rooms, "this is going to be easy."

Then turned the page.

Question 2 (for 29 marks): Which tyre?
(a) front left
(b) front right
(c) rear left
(d) rear right
(e) none of the above

Posted by Peskie at June 25, 2003 12:00 PM

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