me121 said:
That's an interesting idea... But i think it is total bullshit. If you take a two marker from a physics exam, and just say that 10 000 people did the question, and just say that this question was asked on three different years papers, that means you have 30 000 answers to the the one question. The likelihood that out of those 30 000 answers any two will have striking similarities is insanely high. But you don't accuse those two people of plagiarising. You take it to be coincidence.
I believe that for the purposes of examination you should be allowed to plagiarise anyone as much or as little as you like. Unfortunately, the Board of Studies does not publish enough policies to know their view of this. However I have never heard of anyone who received a mark of zero for a question in an exam because it was the same as what someone else wrote in a text book.
Lol, that's not exactly what I meant and what I'm trying to say applies much more to assessments at school than the actual exam I suppose. I get that for 2 markers, most people are going to have the same answer or nearly the same answer, but when answers start being the same for those huge 6/7/8 markers than things start to get iffy.
Although (point to you), I've never seen people get penalised for having the same answer, our teachers were quite iffy in our tests. The HSC wasn't like that, I don't think. Either way, I doubt anyone is actually going to be bothered to memorise a whole figgin' textbook.
Or maybe I'm just paranoid? My school made such a big deal about plagerising during the year that it's become ingrained into my brain and I get really paranoid around copying stuff and repeating it word for word.