>Why didn't Ofqual find some people who understood how stats work, and and ask them for advice? A very substantial number of the people who work at Ofqual are

>Why didn't Ofqual find some people who understood how stats work, and and ask them for advice? A very substantial number of the people who work at Ofqual are statisticians of course, it just seems that they have made some serious mistakes. I don't understand why they couldn't have published at least the algorithm for peer review and discussion months ago. These issues could have been resolved with plenty of time left before results had to be out. Another problem with this algorithm is that every year, a certain number of exam takers just fuck it up on an epic scale. They didn't get any sleep, they get a question that completely flummoxes them, whatever. So the distribution of grades, even at a good school with a pretty good intake, will have some very low grades on them. A big school will have a U or so. Now come to this year - noone had the opportunity to mess up their actual exam so some poor probably-C, B-on-a-good-day kid has to be stuffed into the "U" to make the distribution fit. Purely on the basis that the big school they went to usually has at least one. The difference is, if you fuck the exam up, you come out knowing that! So when you get your U, you know how it happened. This year someone has had it assigned to them without actually screwing up the exam which seems rather harsh.