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His test is not a very good predictor: most of those who appear to use a model in the pre-course test pass the end-of-course exam but so do many of those who do
by hyperpape 11y ago
His test is not a very good predictor: most of those who
appear to use a model in the pre-course test pass the end-of-course exam but so do many of those who do
not. And it doesn’t predict the level of performance, as we discovered when we tried some deeper statistical
analysis (Bornat et al., 2008). But the phenomenon is real and the prediction it makes is reproducible,
as Dehnadi showed in a meta-analysis in his thesis (Dehnadi, 2009). That meta-analysis is summarised
in (Dehnadi et al., 2009).
But that’s not all. It’s not enough to summarise the scientific result, because I wrote and web-circulated “The
camel has two humps” in 2006. That document was very misleading and, because web documents persist, it
continues to mislead to this day. I need to make an explicit retraction of much of what it claimed. Dehnadi
didn’t discover a programming aptitude test. He didn’t find a way of dividing programming sheep from
non-programming goats. We hadn’t shown that nature trumps nurture. He had, however, found a predictive
phenomenon, though he had no explanation of it.
How do you read these paragraphs, or what part of the retraction supports the "two humps" claim and how do you understand that claim?
- MustardTiger 11y agoI don't know how I could make it any clearer than what you quoted. What do you think "But the phenomenon is real and the prediction it makes is reproducible, as Dehnadi showed in a meta-analysis in his thesis" means? Or "We hadn’t shown that nature trumps nurture. He had, however, found a predictive phenomenon, though he had no explanation of it."?