So, how does that work with a competitive assignment like RankManiac 2010? If I am winning, my grade is higher. Does that imply that winning is an unfair advantage? What about the path to winning? If I broke my classmates' hands so they couldn't type, that would certainly be unfair. What about more gray areas, like calling in favors from friends or linking from an existing popular website I happen to have access to?
On a normal Tech problem set, everybody has advantages. They're usually little advantages, like "I happened to see a similar problem at Math Camp" or "My TA gave me a big hint, while your TA gave you a little hint." Sometimes, they're even big advantages, like "I am a certified genius in Physics" or "My father wrote the textbook." With the collaboration policy, these tend to even out. My advantages become your advantages and your advantages become my advantages. This helps even things out. A contest like this, on the other hand, actively discourages collaboration (although it does not eliminate it. I was friends with these guys before this class and I'll remain friends with them afterward). So, without collaboration, do these individual advantages become "unfair?"
Since everyone has their own individual advantages, the fact that your use of them might adversely effect your classmates grades is not unfair. However, consider the following questions:
ReplyDeleteWould it violate the Honor Code to report one's competitors to Google as potential link farms? That is a tool that is at your disposal but if it isn't clear whether you can use it, some might say it is unfair to use it.
What if you posted a funny video of a bunch of nerdy looking Caltech undergrads having sex in public (with their permission)? Would the potential damage that it does to Caltech's reputation be considered an unfair advantage?
What if Google decides that your site is part of a link farm and penalizes sites that have linked to yours and some of those sites belong to members of the Caltech community or are caltech.edu sites that you setup?
Even
Separate from the Honor Code, there is the question of whether you consider participation in the contest consistent with your ethics. Personally, I don't like being solicited for links so I would not be willing to solicit links from others. That would put me at a severe disadvantage in this contest.
ReplyDeleteThat leads to a separate question of whether it is ethical for the professor to make students grades depend in part on them doing something they find unethical.
Moreover, such a contest encourages participants to adopt an "ends justify the means" mentality and disregard the ethical questions. That strikes me as particulary ill advised when the particpants are our future science and technology leaders.