"John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote in message
news:rRJY8.63878$P%6.4315616 at news2.west.cox.net...
>> "Bob LeChevalier" <lojbab at lojban.org> wrote in message
> news:n53viuso190dvhbk2o6c2m5fu7gvmvranh at 4ax.com...> > "John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote:
> > >"Cary Kittrell" <cary at afone.as.arizona.edu> wrote in message
> > >news:agn34f$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.
A properly constructed test wouldn't have been multiple choice. The test is
essentially meaningless.
I like how you admit that they're multiple choice now.
