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In NFL fandom, Football Outsiders's Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), is perhaps the best-regarded predictive model of results. In a shoot-out on /r/n
by ellyagg 12y ago
In NFL fandom, Football Outsiders's Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), is perhaps the best-regarded predictive model of results. In a shoot-out on /r/nfl last year, it outdid ~20 other ratings and rankings in predicting outcomes. One can only imagine that if predicting NFL games were as politicized as school outcomes, there'd be a powerful lobby claiming DVOA "doesn't make a lot of sense".
You're right, this particular model might be bad. But something along these lines will be good, inasmuch as correctly approximately evaluating a teacher's effect on outcomes is good. Science always wins.
- ryoshu 12y agoIt should be simple to develop a predictive model of programmer effectiveness. We can measure the number of lines of codes, number of defects committed, number of defects fixed, etc. against the average developer on the average software project and then we have a way of approximately evaluating a programmer's contributions to a software project. Science is really hard.
- underpantsgnome 12y agoSee, the thing is, people are already trying really hard to do that. Practicing programmers, even.
- Florin_Andrei 12y agoAnd it's hard to do that even when the desired outcome is just good code. Now try and do it when the desired outcome is good people (education).
- underpantsgnome 12y agoGood point. Would you agree that: even if a phenomenon (for example performance of some sort of worker) is hard to model, we should still try, especially if that phenomenon provides enormous value to society?
- eevilspock 12y agoLife is a hell of a lot more complicated than the game of football.