"The 9th Witch" <appalachian_witch at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ah044j$oqm9k$1 at ID-131540.news.dfncis.de...
>> Bob LeChevalier <lojbab at lojban.org> wrote in message
> news:1k37juss6m9iuahd47ubpglru223okfpj2 at 4ax.com...> > "Parse Tree" <parsetree at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >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.
> >
> > Actually the test is well-constructed, since the various multiple choice
> > answers each corresponds to a particular conception or likely
> misconception
> > of the problem. When one is constructing a normed test, guessing is not
a
> > problem. One can adjust scores for guessing by including a guessing
> penalty
> > (this happens on the SATs for example) or one can simply compare
> percentages
> > choosing each answer with those of other populations (which is what
TIMSS
> > does). TIMSS is not designed so that ANY kid could get a perfect score
or
> > anywhere near a perfect score, and I've never read a report that
suggests
> > that any kid did so. There are easy problems and there are hard
problems,
> > and the problems are weighted by the difficulty that they were found to
> > present to the entire test population.
> >
> > TIMSS also included many problems that were NOT multiple choice, BTW,
and
> you
> > could not get full credit unless your work was shown and contained the
key
> > steps expected in the solution.
> >
>> Well, shit, I'd would have missed it too. I never write down the steps,
just
> chicken scratches and the correct answer.
When I was littler, I was always scolded for not showing enough work. They
expect so many unnecessary steps. While they may require multiplication to
be explicitly written out, I most certainly do not. And what's with proper
notation? Just useless memorization.
