Cheat sheet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- "Cheat sheet" may refer to the Wikipedia:Cheatsheet.
A cheat sheet or crib sheet is a concise set of notes used for quick reference. "Cheat sheet" may also be rendered "cheatsheet" or "cheat-sheet."
Cheat sheets are so named because they may be used by students without the instructor's knowledge to cheat on a test. However, at higher levels of education where rote memorization is de-emphasized, use of cheat sheets on exams may be sanctioned and recommended by the instructor (and thus such use is not cheating, despite the name). The act of preparing a cheat sheet is also a useful educational exercise, thus students are typically only allowed to use cheat sheets they have manually written themselves. In such usage a cheat sheet is a physical piece of paper, often filled with equations and facts in compressed writing.
Cheat sheets are popular in any setting where a quick reference is useful, not just for examinations. The computer industry has many cheat sheets due to the high number of commands and actions one must learn to use programming languages and command-line interfaces.
Professionally prepared cheat sheets for some subjects are available for purchase, although usually one can download a free (either gratis or libre) document to view in a web browser or for printing.
Various tools can be used to produce cheat sheets, besides pen and paper. Early techniques involved photocopier reduction of reference material.
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