general studies, exclusion from
A very difficult thing to achieve. In our mocks, a group of 12 to 15 people decided to have a competition to see who could get the lowest mark. This was not as easy as it sounds, as 70% of the 6 hours of exams were made up of about 300 multiple choice questions. So you had to be pretty bright to get *all* of them wrong. Only Bazaz proved to be that bright. In fact, he was the only one to do badly enough that the school was confident enough that he had done badly on purpose to be willing to not allow him to take the A-level. At one point during the exam we were asked to write an essay about how we would go about determining, by scientific means, the validity of the phrase 'Too many cooks spoil the broth'. He wrote a very detailed account of how he would take an enormous cauldron of boiling water and a large panel of testers who could grade a broth from 1 to 10. He would then add one cook to the boling water and stir him around, and then get all the tasters to taste the ensuing broth. The marks would be averaged. Another cook would be added every 5 minutes, with the mixture being judged after each addition. If at any point the resulting average mark was lower than before the latest addition, one would have proved conclusively that *at that point*, too many cooks had indeed spoiled the broth.
written by Ma*cus , approved by Log