3 ms·

It is suspicious that they had so many with 0 correct answers out of 8. Here are the 4 easier ones of the questions: > If the chance of getting a disease is 10

It is suspicious that they had so many with 0 correct answers out of 8. Here are the 4 easier ones of the questions: > If the chance of getting a disease is 10%, how many people would be expected to get the disease? Out of 1000? > If the chance of getting a disease is 20 out of 100, this would be the same as having a _____% chance of getting the disease. > Imagine that we roll a fair, six‐sided die 1000 times. Out of 1000 rolls, how many times do you think the die would come up as an even number? > In the BIG BUCKS LOTTERY, the chances of winning a $10.00 prize are 1%. What is your best guess about how many people would win a $10.00 prize if 1000 people each buy a single ticket from BIG BUCKS? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bdm.1751 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bdm.1751 I guess a lot of people never learn what % mean, and since basically all questions are related to % they would fail just from that. So I'm not sure if this is a good test of numeracy, feels like it relies too much on a few key items. Edit: Also that test was designed so it gave a normal distribution for a typical population, in this study we see a lot of 0's and then no 1's and 2's. So it feels like the population tested wasn't representative, or some of the students asked just didn't bother with the math questions. Since students are forced to participate I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them just skipped trying at all on the math parts.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
>> Imagine that we roll a fair, six‐sided die 1000 times. Out of 1000 rolls, how many times do you think the die would come up as an even number? A classic example of a question you can only answer if you don't know what you're talking about. I bet they think the answer is 500. 500 is the most likely result, but the odds of actually getting 500 heads on 1000 flips of a fair coin are 2.5%, 1 in 40. A little ways out, at 505 (or 495) heads, the odds have fallen all the way to... 2.4%. This is kind of like asking "Imagine that we roll a fair, six-sided die one time. Out of that one roll, which number do you think would come up?" Except, assuming you make the best possible guess both times, you're more than six times as likely to be right for my revised question.
- geomark 7y ago
  Isn't the correct answer about 500? Sure, getting exactly 500 would not be highly probable. But getting approximately 500 would be.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Is "approximately 3.5" the answer to "which number will come up when I roll this 6-sided die once?"?
    - geomark 7y ago
      The Expected value would be exactly 3.5 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value#Finite_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value#Finite_case ). But isn't the question malformed since for a single role only one of the discrete values can come up?
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        How is "which number will come up when I roll this die?" better or worse posed than "how many even numbers will come up when I roll this die several times?"?

thaumasiotes 7y ago

>> Imagine that we roll a fair, six‐sided die 1000 times. Out of 1000 rolls, how many times do you think the die would come up as an even number? A classic example of a question you can only answer if you don't know what you're talking about. I bet they think the answer is 500. 500 is the most likely result, but the odds of actually getting 500 heads on 1000 flips of a fair coin are 2.5%, 1 in 40. A little ways out, at 505 (or 495) heads, the odds have fallen all the way to... 2.4%. This is kind of like asking "Imagine that we roll a fair, six-sided die one time. Out of that one roll, which number do you think would come up?" Except, assuming you make the best possible guess both times, you're more than six times as likely to be right for my revised question.

geomark 7y ago
Isn't the correct answer about 500? Sure, getting exactly 500 would not be highly probable. But getting approximately 500 would be.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Is "approximately 3.5" the answer to "which number will come up when I roll this 6-sided die once?"?
  - geomark 7y ago
    The Expected value would be exactly 3.5 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value#Finite_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value#Finite_case ). But isn't the question malformed since for a single role only one of the discrete values can come up?
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      How is "which number will come up when I roll this die?" better or worse posed than "how many even numbers will come up when I roll this die several times?"?