When I was at university, I studied very hard. But a lot of my friends did very little work. Some did just enough to pass the exams. Others didn’t do quite enough. Fred Baines was such a student. He spent more time drinking in the teahouse than working in the library.

Once at the end of the term, we had to take an important test in Chinese. The test had 100 questions. Beside each question we had to write “True” or “False”. While I was studying in my room the night before the test, Fred was watching TV. Fred usually worried a lot the night before a test. But on that night he looked very easy. Then he told me of his idea.

“It’s very simple. There are 100 questions and I have to get 50 right to pass the test. I’ll take a coin into the room. I haven’t studied a Chinese book for months, so I’ll toss (掷，扔) the coin. In that way, I’m sure I’ll get half of the questions right. ”

The next day, Fred came happily into the examination room. As he sat tossing a coin for half an hour, he wrote down his answers. Then he left, half an hour before the rest of us.

The next day, Fred met his Chinese teacher at the school gate. “Oh, good,” he said. “Have you got the results of the test?” The teacher looked at him and smiled, “Ah, it’s you, Baines. Just a minute. ” Then the teacher reached his pocket and took out a coin. He threw it into the air, caught in his hand and looked at it. “I’m sorry, Baines, you failed!”