"John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote:
>"Cary Kittrell" <cary at afone.as.arizona.edu> wrote in message
>news:agn34f$hla$1 at oasis.ccit.arizona.edu...>> In article <SZCX8.47920$P%6.3357792 at news2.west.cox.net>
>> "John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> writes:
>> What Johnny isn't telling you is that he "just" dug these up years ago,
>> and has been drawing erroneous conclusions ever since. For example
>> he also is not telling you that:
>> <
>> <Zero percent of American 12th grade girls correctly solved TIMSS math
>> <problems.
>>>> It's not the girls who can't apply math correctly.
>>>> Google has it.
>Let's use a simple example of how wrong you are, cary.
>>Question K09 on the 12th Grade TIMSS Math test given to 12th graders around
>the world in 1995 reveals an astounding difference in math skills between
>the sexes in all the countries who participated. The average difference in
>all countries was 10.5%, with 47.3% of boys and 36.8% of girls answering
>correctly, but the difference in the US was 22.1% (28.6% of girls and 50.7%
>of boys). In countries like Cyprus where 60.1% of the boys answered
>correctly, guesses on the test would not have influenced the scores by that
>much, but where only 28.6% of American girls answered correctly, guesses
>must be taken into account.
But did you not say just above that "Zero percent of American 12th grade
girls correctly solved TIMSS math problems." Now you are admitting that
28.6% solved question K09, thereby admitting your falsehood.
>Since this was a multiple choice question with four possible choices, the
>probability of getting the correct answer just by guessing is 25%. In other
>words, for every four students who guessed, one of them would have gotten
>the correct answer by chance. The maximum score would have been achieved
>had all the students who didn't understand the problem guessed at the
>answer, so where 28.6% of American girls answered the problem correctly,
>23.8% of them got the correct answer by guessing, and 4.8% indicated that
>they understood the problem [x = total guesses, 0.25x = correct guesses,
>0.75x = incorrect guesses = 71.4%, x = 95.2%, 0.25x = 23.8%, 28.6% got the
>correct answer - 23.8% guessed the correct answer = 4.8% understood the
>problem]. However, with an estimated error of plus or minus 3%, only 1.8%
>are known with certainty to have understood the problem.
Lots of handwaving that makes unsupportable assumptions, but with the net
result that you still have a positive percentage that correctly solved the
questions. (Of course even those who guessed correctly solved the questions
if they got the right answer, so your handwaving is irrelevant).
>Is this adequate proof that our attempt to establish "gender equality" is a
>failure? Yes.
No. It is proof that you know how to handwave numbers and come up with
irrelevant conclusions.
lojbab
