talk about artificial intelligence! nuances of language? i use eudora 5 as my email client ... and, eudora 5 has a feature (??) called MOOD WATCH ... that allows you to either SET the message you are planning to send OR, will WARN you of ... whether the message might be offensive to the "average reader" ... 1 chile = might be offensive, 2 chiles = will PROBABLY be offensive ... and 3 chilies ... well, its HOT unlike spell checkers and grammar checkers that show you where the problem (might) is ... mood watch says nothing of where the offending spot(s) might be note: you can disable this feature if you want ... and just be offensive anytime without regards to any reader! now, i had sent the message below to aera-d ... and the topic was about Computer Adaptive Testing ... and i got back the warning dialog box ... DING ... is probably offensive to the average reader ... i was perplexed ... just have a look at the message ... and see if YOU can figure out the culprit (i did ...through a process of elimination of lines and words ... ) one wonders what the algorithm is that eudora uses .... [NOTE: IF ANYONE WANTS TO MAKE THEIR GUESS TO ME PERSONALLY ... I WILL TELL YOU THE CULPRIT ... SO, YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO POST ANY COMMENTS TO THE LIST DIRECTLY ...] fascinating ... the probably offensive message follows =============== no test publisher can tell a user ... what it means to "fail" a test this has to be decided by the user OF the test ... or the professional committee that will oversee the implementation of the test results if the test is properly normed and properly documented ... then you should have some ideas (in their documentation) about the measurement error that might be present ... around raw scores that Ss get or, some estimates of ability generated for them by the process ... then, it is up to you .... to decide where the cutoff will be personally, in high stakes situations ... i would prefer a method that does NOT allow different Ss to take more or less numbers of items ... but, i would rather standardize this more tightly ... due to the fact that disgruntled examinees ... could make a real big stink out of it ... and besides, it appears to me that with the kinds of Ss you are focusing on, the more mysterious is the procedure you use ... to make this decision ... the worse off you will be ... certainly, it will be much much harder to communicate to them ... what their score means ... _________________________________________________________ dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university 208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
