The Health University is quite strict about attendance of medical students in their lectures. There are some departments who mark the students present irrespective of whether they are present or not. We do not, because we are conscientious, and also because it would be unfair to those who make all the efforts to be present.
I had a lecture this afternoon. The audience seemed august enough. But I could not afford to spend time on taking attendance, because the topic was such that I could not finish teaching it in one hour. So I circulated the attendance sheet and proceeded with teaching them. At the end of the class I got the attendance sheet back. Now there are sometimes some students who mark attendance of their friends who are elsewhere. To discourage that tendency, I requested two students one boy and one girl, seated at two ends of the first row to perform a head count i.e. count the number of people present. The idea was to see if their numbers coincided with each other and with the number of signatures on the attendance sheet. The girl got a count of 76, while the boy got a count of 136. I was surprised.
"Did you count only the girls?" I asked the girl.
"No, Sir. I counted only half the students" she said.
"Where was your dividing line?" I asked.
"There" she said, pointing to the middle of the room somewhere. This seemed highly inaccurate, to say the least. So I requested this girl's neighbor to perform the count. She got a count of 124.
"Either the fellow is helpful to those who are absent but are marked present, or the girl has made a mistake. I will count myself" I said and counted them myself.
"I will update you on the results" I said. "We have three counts. The other two counts are known to you. My count came as 140."
The whole class laughed. "I think the girl made a mistake. I myself also must have made a mistake too. Whenever I withdraw money from the bank and there are a lot of bank notes, I get a different count every time I count the bundle. It must be the same with a head count for me. The fellow is right. Thanks to all three of you who helped me with the count. But the girl ..." I wiggled my finger in her direction a few times, but could not say anything. the whole class laughed again. I think my pantomime must have stimulated the class more than my teaching.
