On: Spain builds submarine 70 tons too heavy due to wr...

[adonese]

We had this unspoken of law back in school where you better off write any answer than leaving the question empty. This is quite possibly drives some of these answers (at least here in my case)

[dmos62 → adonese]

That's ironic, because in science nothing is usually better than nonsense.

[askvictor → dmos62]

The education system has some major problems with it... That said, a simple fix for this particular issue is to assign negative marks for a wrong answer (compared to zero for leaving it blank) - some multiple choice tests do this to minimise guessing.

[sethammons → adonese]

I had a few teachers that gave negative points for wrong answers to prevent guesswork. The idea being that empty answers were feedback to them on what they might not have taught well.

[sitkack → sethammons]

I love this. Perhaps answers could be a tuple of confidence and the answer. Guessing is important, being unsure of your answer is also important.

[mjevans → adonese]

For me it was always show your work, and hope for partial credit for where you got to before things went off the rails.

[anonsivalley652 → adonese]

Psychology and political majors can get away with that but it's not how safety/life-critical should engineering work. They original company failed to review, at multiple levels, fundamental calculations including density. They should have to recheck other calculations, such as hull strength and those related to propulsion as well.