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Why is a physics professor surprised by this? You will get exactly the same "step" plot directly from the binomial distribution if you assume independent tria
by dvse 15y ago
Why is a physics professor surprised by this? You will get exactly the same "step" plot directly from the binomial distribution if you assume independent trials and a linear dependency between the SAT band and the probability of getting an A in a course.
If someone's probability of getting an A in a single course is 0.7 or above, the probability of getting at least 8 As out of 16 courses rapidly converges to 1, similar result holds for those with probability below 0.3.
Nothing new has been shown here - can't believe they actually wrote a paper.
- Confusion 15y agoYou will get exactly the same "step" plot Except that they don't, for other majors than physics and mathematics.
- dvse 15y agoThey don't show it. The obvious explanation is that the grades in humanities are not as strongly correlated with SAT.
- quandrum 15y agoSo what you're say is, you didn't read the article?
- dvse 15y agoNotice that to get a "step" plot it is necessary to assume that probability of getting an A is strongly correlated with the SAT score. The paper says that for humanities there is no strong correlation. On the other hand, the "result" for physics is an elementary consequence of repeated trials (binomial distribution)
- carbocation 15y agoIt's not helpful to simply call the commenter out on not reading the article. First, it's unproductive, and second, it's merely conjecture. Perhaps you both read it but interpreted it differently? It would instead be more productive to point out why you think the person didn't read the article, thereby furthering discussion.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rflrob 15y agoI think independent trials is not an obviously good assumption. Any properly designed major will have later courses build on earlier ones, so one might have predicted that performance in the first course was more predictive of GPA than SAT score (though this isn't the only model that would lead to such a prediction). I, for one, am surprised that it appears to be so independent.