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I'm genuinely confused at the criticism of the content of the questions and especially the criticism that they're "not hard". I mean, I guess they aren't algebr
by geofft 4y ago
I'm genuinely confused at the criticism of the content of the questions and especially the criticism that they're "not hard". I mean, I guess they aren't algebra in the sense of "use the quadratic formula," but I'm not sure that's a useful sense. The question about percentages and the one about reading the graph are both eminently practical questions, ones that very directly respond to the algebra student's "When are we going to use this in real life" plea. I can see people needing to know this in any practical field of work - and I can realistically see people not knowing it, too. And plugging numbers into the quadratic formula isn't hard, either. It's a matter of knowing the definition, which is precisely a thing the author criticizes, and it's much more direct and mindless application of the definition than that question about whether a certain number is rational.
(And is it supposed to be hard, or a good thing if it's hard? The goal should be that everyone passes; nobody needs a weed-out ninth grade math class. The questions should be meaningful, yes, and they should show that you actually understand the subject. But this is a subject we would, ideally, want everyone to understand well.)
The actual June 2022 Algebra I Regents exam is available online and you can see what the questions look like: https://www.nysedregents.org/algebraone/622/algone62022-exam.pdf https://www.nysedregents.org/algebraone/622/algone62022-exam... Most of them look like conventional algebra to me. And there is indeed one use-the-quadratic-formula question!
(The criticism that a zero-bits-of-information response passes is certainly valid, and could be easily solved by subtracting fractional points for incorrect answers, a common approach on other standardized tests.)
- EleanorKonik 4y agoIs this still common? I think AP recently moved away from subtracting points for incorrect answers.
- kurupt213 4y agoThat’s too bad. It was just a fraction of a point. It’s meant to make guessing (not educated guessing) a zero sum game
- naniwaduni 4y agoEven that's not punishing enough, since it becomes straightforwardly strategic to guess if you expect your "average" score to fail. You really want wild guesses to be negative expectation, AMC-style. That doesn't exactly solve the problem, but at least becomes less exploitable—if you're competent to optimize the number of guesses you make dynamically during a test, you probably less likely to need to.
- geofft 4y agoI think it's okay for wild guesses to be zero expectation; if you look at it from an information-theory perspective, leaving the question blank and wildly guessing both communicate the same thing, "I don't know." What's the benefit of incentivizing test takers to leave questions blank instead of wildly guessing? I get that it feels better to discourage guessing, but how does it improve the accuracy of the test as a measure of understanding? And if you can rule out at least one answer, that communicates that you know something about the material under test - provided, of course, the test has no joke or otherwise implausible answers, which appears to be true of the Regents test that I posted above. Take question 6, for example, which asks whether the days of the month are best described as "(1) integers (2) whole numbers (3) rational numbers (4) irrational numbers". Suppose you forgot the distinction between integers and whole numbers, but you knew that the other two answers were incorrect, and so you randomly picked one of the first two options. Doesn't that convey understanding of part of the material under test, such that a score of a positive fractional point in expectation is reasonable? (A more logistically complicated system would be to permit students to mark any answers they think might be correct and therefore remove the "in expectation" part. If you don't select the correct answer, you get no points, but if you select n answers including the correct answer, you get 1/n points, and leaving a question blank is considered equal to selecting all the answers. But the cognitive overhead of this system probably makes it not worthwhile.)
- throwawayffffas 4y agoI had a look at the test and it's indeed reasonable, I don't get why this guy is outraged. I don't even see why this test has to be a pass/fail test, you could just get a score. The questions he featured are clearly cherry-picked. But as you said I don't think this test is even supposed to be hard, it's a test for kids just out of junior high, it's not like a test to be the head of the Federal reserve or something.