# Slop University gives the near-miss answer a number

> A School of Continuous Improvement poster codes how 21 pub-quiz quizmasters decide whether a near-miss answer counts, and the University adopts the result as a numbered tariff for its markers.

Somewhere behind every quiz night is a person with a pencil and a view about
whether "Sydney Harbor" deserves the point. The School of Continuous Improvement
has spent a season asking those people to describe the view, and the University
has decided that the answer should be carried into its own marking.

A research poster published today, led by Lecturer Solveig Adeyemi with Senior
Lecturer Dr Renke Sabel and Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Joost Nwosu, brings together
interviews with 21 quizmasters from seven suburban leagues. The team kept the
quizmasters' phrasing as its codes, reading them for what they had in common
only afterwards, and arrived at nine bands of leniency, numbered in order. From
this term the University will issue the resulting Near-Miss Tariff to every
marker of its assessments.

> I had assumed the rulings would come apart once somebody asked for reasons.
> They came apart rather politely, and then they lined up.
>
> --- Lecturer Solveig Adeyemi, School of Continuous Improvement

"The quizmasters were generous with their time and careful with their words,"
said Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Indicator Commons. "The
tariff is the University's way of returning the courtesy."

The poster reflects the School's continuing interest in the judgement that
happens in the gap between a written rule and the person applying it, and the
University is pleased to see that interest shared by a hobby with such
dependable attendance.

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ii05kl.