Statistics professor demands improbable equal effort for 4-student group project—1 doesn't help, all 4 claim an impossible 33% equal share—group invents new math making 132%=100%: 'The professor was confused. "That adds up to 132%, how is that possible?"'

The first day of school and the return to the college campus are just around the corner, well, for the students among us. For the rest of us. who are glad to be rid of the stress of exams and long assignments, it's a chance for us to look back through rose-tinted glasses at our days in the classroom.

The professor in this story was clearly hoping that the fear of failing and the requirement for self-reporting your effort would keep every member honest and encourage every member to do their equal 25% of the project. This would keep the dedicated students, who would normally wind up just doing the entire project themselves, from doing the project and incentivize the normally non-committed group members to turn up to group work sessions or otherwise come clean about their lack of contribution. 

But, reading this now, you're probably already realizing the flaw in this plan and the crucial detail that the professor overlooked, and it's not the impossible solution that the group would come to at the end of it…

Keep reading to see the original story that one of the university students shared with an online community. The only real shame here is that the student who didn't contribute still got credit for the project, which was the entire point in the first place.

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.

The flaw is this: The professor's plan relied on the already dishonest group members who would take credit for work they didn't do suddenly turning honest under this new threat of receiving a 0. But they were already going to take credit for work they didn't do, so how does giving everyone in the group a zero, hinging on the slacker's honest word, suddenly solve the problem of non-commitment and dishonesty that it was purportedly trying to fix?

What if the already dishonest slacker simply lied about their contribution?

By creating this “everyone fails if self-reports don't show equal work completed,” he actually gave any slackers more of an ability than usual to hold the rest of the group hostage. Usually, when groups have problems with members during group projects, they would go to the teacher, and many teachers just tell students to “Just figure it out,” amongst themselves. Or they might step in and straighten the slacker out… or just simply fail them. As they should.

All the professor's policy does is keep him from having to step in and resolve any group squabbles. Which, fair enough, it's not high school, and the last thing most professors want to do is deal with student problems. Most of them wouldn't even teach if they didn't have to as part of their university research job.

But it's not high school, so why are we assigning group projects anyway?

I guess for all of their well-known problems, it's those very same problems that make group projects the most realistic lesson you can learn in school. And that lesson is one that will follow you through your working career: You're going to end up doing other people's work for them and watch them take all the credit anyway.