Professors win annual ‘R U Smarter Than A College Student?’

One of the questions Luke Batdorff, student president of Alpha Chi, remembered was, “This is a ‘first in, first out’ data structure one might learn about in computer science,” and the answer was “queue.”

During this part of the competition, the professors took the lead. The round ended with the students having around 2,000 points while the professors had around 3,000.

During the next round, each team had to answer a bonus question and could wager points. The questions ranged from Huntington trivia, including both the town and the university, and United Brethren trivia. The professors doubled their score to around 7,000, while the students wagered away all of their points to end with zero after this round.”

“They have dedicated their lives to higher education and have spent more hours in a classroom than most of us have been alive,” Wickersham said. “In one sense, they are supposed to win. That being said, however, we should have given more thought to our final wager. That was just bad strategy.”

Alpha Chi held this event to promote academic excellence and scholarship on campus. Batdorff said it is usually held during J-term, but it was moved to the spring semester in 2015.

Wickersham said that this was the second year he had been involved with this event, and he had fun doing it.

“There really wasn’t a whole lot of pressure involved, although it’s definitely embarrassing to miss a question,” Wickersham said. “This is all basic knowledge that we’re supposed to know from intro-level courses. I00t’s amazing how by the time you get to being a senior how quickly facts you’ve learned from outside your major seem to get crowded out by your own specialization.”