"Bob LeChevalier" <lojbab at lojban.org> wrote in message
news:n53viuso190dvhbk2o6c2m5fu7gvmvranh at 4ax.com...
> "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.
>
You obviously didn't understand any part of the above, so why bother to
explain it to you?
Oh, well, let's try, just one more time.
It's disingenuous for you to ignore the effects of the multiple choice
questions on this test. On this particular question, because there are four
choices, 25% of the answers will be correct JUST because students guessed.
So when the scores are reported and it shows that 28.6% of girls got this
question correct, you cannot claim that 28.6% of them understood the
question. At BEST (after subtracting the 25% of the questions which were
correct because of guesses) you COULD claim that 3.6% of them understood the
question.
But the problem is that there's a plus or minus 3% error, so the ONLY thing
we can be sure of about American girls' performance on this question is that
0.6% of them understood the problem and could answer the question correctly.
No, that's not zero percent, but when this is averaged along with all the
questions where girls actually scored lower than if they had just GUESSED,
the sum total of their scores is a statistial ZERO percent.
The number of times that they scored lower than if they had just guessed was
uncanny http://christianparty.net/timssh04.htm
and
http://christianparty.net/timssl10.htm
In addition to that, this doesn't even count the many questions which were
in the plus or minus 3% error range. Just like the above example, this is
NOT evidence of 3.6% of American girls understanding the question.
John Knight
