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When I hear a result like "software which understands basic grammar structures can predict what grade a human would give an essay" I think my views are roughly:
by mherdeg 7y ago
When I hear a result like "software which understands basic grammar structures can predict what grade a human would give an essay" I think my views are roughly:
* 5% - cool, we could make a company that grades essays
* 15% - cool, we could make a company that grades essays and sell our source code to the test-prep industry
* 80% - fascinating, it sounds like the exam designers need to reevaluate what they are trying to measure with essay questions
- thekyle 7y agoWhatever we decide to measure, it needs to scale to millions of essay responses each year in a way such that scores are consistent across entire states or countries. With that in mind I'd imagine it's difficult to do much more than grade on grammar and basic semantics.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoNo it doesn't. And if you succeed you will simply be measuring an uninteresting but manageable subset of the problem which will then become in some people's eyes the definition of the problem. Education is supposed to be about teaching people to think, to give them the tools with which to do it, to be able to evaluate, criticise, invent, etc.