4 ms·
Grades are at least supposed to reflect the quality of the students who pass the tests with some level of linearity. If the author doesn't believe this is the
by bnegreve 11y ago
Grades are at least supposed to reflect the quality of the students who pass the tests with some level of linearity. If the author doesn't believe this is the case, s-he shouldn't use them in the first place, especially not to discuss grade inflation.
The kind of false impression that at least I get when I look at this graph is that the grades were multiplied by a factor ~1.3 over the past 20 years when they were only multiplied by a factor 1.06. For anyone familiar with GPA, this is misleading.
- pervycreeper 11y ago>the grades were multiplied by a factor ~1.3 The point is that a grade is an ordinal quantity (somewhat). You don't get anything useful from multiplying grades by any "factor". Anyone in danger of thinking otherwise should not blame the graph. Fast food articles such as "Top 10 secrets of misleading graphs your profs don't want you to know" are probably more culpable in that regard.
- bnegreve 11y ago> The point is that a grade is an ordinal quantity In principle I agree, but grade inflation preserves the order so why should we care about grade inflation if grades are only about order? I think the plot and the rest of the article goes beyond that. Also an histogram is a poor representation choice for ordinal data.
- bryondowd 11y agoGrade inflation doesn't preserve order between the inflated and non-inflated grades, which I think is the point. An inflated low A might actually be lower than an original high B, but gets the shiny A that looks better on paper.