Dennis Roberts wrote:
> At 08:56 AM 11/16/01 -0700, Roy St Laurent wrote:
> >It's not clear to me whether recent posters are serious about these
> >examples, but
> >I will reiterate my previous post:
> >
> >For most mathematics / statistics examinations, the "answer" to a
> >question is the
> >*process* by which the student obtains the incidental final number or
> >result.
> >The result itself is most often just not that important to evaluating
> >students'
> >understanding or knowledge of the subject. And therefore an unsupported
> >
> >or lucky answer is worth nothing.
>
> the problems with the above are twofold:
>
> 1. this assumes that correct answers are NOT important ... (which believe
> me if you are getting change from a cashier, etc. etc. ... ARE ... we just
> cannot say that knowing the process but not being able to come up with a
> correct answer ... = good performance)
>
> 2. that answers without any OTHER supplied information on the part of the
> examinee can't be taken as "knowledge" when, it (sometimes) can be
>
> what if you asked on an exam ... the following:
>
> 1. what is the mean of 10, 9, 8, 8 and 7? _____
>
> 2. what is the mean of 27, 23, 19, 17 and 16? ____
>
> 3. what is the mean of 332, 234, 198, 239, and 200? _____
>
> 4. what is the mean of 23.4, 19.8, 23.1, 19.0, and 26.4? _____
>
> and, for each of 1 to 4 ... they put down in the blanks, the correct answers
>
> would you be willing to say that they know how to calculate the mean ...
> ie, they know the process that is needed (and can implement it)?
>
> i think you would EVEN though there is no other supporting process
> information given by the examinee
>
> so, the statement that no credit should be given when there is no
> supporting other evidence (ie, the process is shown) ... can't be
> considered necessarily valid
>
> the problem here is NOT that no supporting evidence is given, the problem
> is that with ONLY ONE instance of some given concept/skill that we are
> attempting to assess on the part of the examinee, you are not nearly as
> sure given only ONE CORRECT RESPONSE to one item ... whether it could have
> been an answer because of real knowledge or, just happens to be the right
> answer that was arrived at (luckily for the examinee) through some faulty
> process
While this was not exactly my point I think it reinforces it very well. Given
a correct answer, even if arrived at in some bizarre manner what do we do with
it? Given what may be blind luck I would credit it (given we don't get into
some nasty legal problems ) jsut because the candidate was that blind lucky.
--
------------------
John Kane
The Rideau Lakes, Ontario Canada
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