"John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote:
>> > The ONLY time you could apply that argument is when a large percentage of
>> > them answered correctly, but even then, if 0% failed to respond at all, then
>> > some of them HAD to guess.
>>>> Well, that's a reasonable assumption, but so what? Some people probably
>> guess on every multiple choice question on ever test.
>>You and I agree. LeChevalier is an idiot. He said, and I quote: "we don't
>know that people guess randomly when faced with a test question they do not
>understand. Indeed, we know that they do not".
>>This is not the stupidest thing he's ever said. And he'll deny even said it
>as time goes by. But only a real moron "thinks" like this.
I see no reason to deny I said it. I believe it is true. People are
incapable of behaving truly randomly. More likely, if someone were to have
no idea what the answers were, but wanted to guess, they would mark the
answers NON-randomly, like marking "A" for all of them or repeating a
pattern.
>You don't seem to understand the point either. If *all* students just
>*guessed* on a four part multiple choice question, and didn't have a clue
>about what the answer was, they would have gotten 25% of them correct just
>by chance.
But the converse is NOT true, that "if just 25% of them got the question
correct, then all students just guessed".
>The only way for them to get less than 25% correct would be to know
>something about the problem and select the wrong answer on purpose, or to
>have the wrong information in the first place.
A slight dawn of understanding. Of course when they "select the wrong answer
on purpose", they don't think it is the wrong answer.
>If 30% of them got it correct, this doesn't mean that 30% of them knew the
>answer.
It might or it might not.
If they didn't have the wrong information, or didn't make an error,
>then of the 30% who got it correct, 23% would have gotten it correct because
>they guessed, and only 7% would have gotten it correct because they
>understood the problem [ x = total guesses, 0.25x = correct guesses 0.75x =
>wrong guesses = 70%, x = .93, 0.25x = .23 = correct guesses, correct total
>answers of 30% - 23% correct guesses = 7% (those who knew the problem)].
You cannot determine the percentage who guessed. You persist in assuming
that everyone who got the answer wrong guessed randomly, and there is no
evidence of this.
>> This would only make sense if everyone in the group knew they didn't
>> know, and just started guessing.
>>Which was the case for many of the questions that American girls answered.
>You can't score that low, consistently, if you know something about the
>subject
They did NOT score "that low, consistently"
>> My point is that you illustrate the saying, "Figures don't lie, but
>> liars sure can figure."
>>>> You figure because American girls got a score of 22.something correct on
>> one test question on one test, that there is no such thing as "gender
>> equality".
>>No. I figure because American girls consistently scored lower than if
>they'd just guessed on a number of problems, not just one,
But they did not do so on all problems or even most, and indeed boys scored
low on nearly as many questions as girls.
>and because this is a pattern that's repeated in many other tests,
Provide a citation to a real reference site (not one of yours) showing any
data on any other standardized test question which is broken down by gender
showing or implying that girls guessed.
>that they were either
>misinformed in the classroom, or didn't believe what they were taught and
>went with "intuition" instead of facts (or a combination).
Or perhaps were not taught the relevant subject matter at all, and used
imperfect logic to try to figure it out from what they did know.
>American boys didn't do that much better, btw, which is another thing that I
>figure.
As she said, liars figure.
>> > What part of that don't you understand (other than the typical and
>> > infinitely STUPID statement by lojbab that no students guessed)?
>>>> He never made that statement.
>>>And I quote: "we don't know that people guess randomly when faced with a
>test question they do not understand. Indeed, we know that they do not".
That is not the same thing as what I said. I said that *people* do not guess
*randomly*. "People" is not the same as "any person". It is quite possible
to find an occasional person who guessed randomly on a test - indeed *you*
could prove that statement wrong by signing up for a test and then guessing
on all the answers, since it seems likely that you wouldn't understand any of
them. But in order to guess randomly, you would need to bring a random
number generator in and use that to determine what answers you marked.
lojbab
