John Knight wrote:
>> "Parse Tree" <parsetree at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:C9mY8.296$QY4.128034 at news20.bellglobal.com...>> > > ALL this requires is a little bit of addition and subtraction. It
> doesn't
> > > require you to resolve a million third order partial differential
> > equations.
> > > It doesn't require calculus. It doesn't even require algebra if you do
> it
> > > right.
> >
> > Statistics very much requires algebra. Calculus too, in many cases.
> >
> >
>> Believe me, Parse, you don't need algebra or calculus to calculate the
> statistical average for American girls in TIMSS math. Even adjusting for
> guesses doesn't require anything but some very basic probability theory.
>> It's as simple as this:
>> If you're asked a question which has four multiple choice answers, and you
> haven't got a clue what the answer is, what is the probability of getting a
> correct answer? Since you have once chance in four of getting the right
> answer, your probability is 0.25. If you guess on two questions, your
> probability is .5, and three it's .75, and four, it's 1.0.
>> In other words, over the long run, or over millions of test takers, guessing
> on such a question will yield 25% correct answers, or conversely, every
> fourth answer will be correct.
>> No algebra. No calculus. A bit of probability theory, and you already know
> that 25% of all students will get the correct answer if they only *guess* on
> a four part multiple choice question.
>> Now here's the hard part:
>> Question H04 on TIMSS had four multiple choice answers, so you would think
> that no country or age group or race or sex would answer less than 25% of
> them correct, right? Wrong. http://christianparty.net/timssh04.htm shows
> that American girls answered only 22.8% of them correct.
>> They scored 2.2% lower than if they'd just guessed.
>> How do you think that's possible?
>> You can probably figure this out with no knowledge of algebra or calculus,
> and you already know all the probability theory that might be needed, so
> what is your explanation?
>> John Knight
Oh, and one more thing, isn't interesting that these jerk offs attriutle
lower girls scores to their being female, but lower US scores to
education?
J
