The way Basil Brown would describe it I thought was helpful. He asked what we would do if we missed the lecture the next day. We told him we would get the notes from a friend. He asked us if there was a better way. We said of course, “Get the lecture notes directly from him (the lecturer).” He said there is a better way. What is it? The answer is to get the notes from everyone in the class. If we had everyone’s notes he told us we could reconstruct the exact words that he had spoken to the class the day before. One person would get the first sentence perfectly but not the second sentence. Another would get the first partially and the second also partially. Someone else would capture the second sentence completely. In such a process we could reconstruct the exact words that were spoken. We could even go one better again if we wanted to and that would be to get the notes from the students who did the class last year. If we did the same with their notes we could not only get the words he said to the same class last year but we could track any changes that he introduced from year to year. Even if we got the lecturers notes directly him from we would not necessarily have the exact words he said. He may well have departed from the notes, adding some more explanation, extra to what he had in the notes or skipped some and told the other students this wouldn’t be in the exam.
