John Kane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in sci.stat.edu:
>So you are saying that getting the right answer is not important?
No, of course it's important. But getting the right answer for the
wrong reasons is bad, since one may not be so lucky next time when,
say, calculating a 99% confidence interval for the tensile strength
of a set of steel cables destined to be used on a bridge.
> If one can not see the work then one assumes blind luck?
Blind luck happens surprisingly often. Also common is two errors
that cancel each other. We cannot count on students being lucky or
making two equal and opposite errors in the real world.
>However it would seem important to make this explicit.
As indeed I have done, in the course syllabus distributed at first
meeting, numerous times in class, and at the top of nearly every
exam paper. "You must show your work" in various phrasings.
> While I can see the
>point I am definitely not in agreement unless of course the test says
>explicitly that "The answer is not all that important. Just show how you
>would approach the problem and why" In that case I am totally in
>agreement.
I don't think I ever said the answer is not important; if I did say
so I didn't mean to. The right answer is important, but after all
the purpose of an exam is to demonstrate mastery of the subject, and
a bare answer with no supporting work doesn't really do that, does
it?
And this brings me back to why I actually posted my query: how do we
evaluate students who do poorly on exams but may in fact be able to
do well in real-world situations where they must use the material?
Saying it another way, students AA and BB both answered questions
poorly on an exam. Perhaps one (or both) may be quite likely to
apply correct statistical techniques correctly in the real world.
How do we know? How can we do a better job of evaluating students
than merely setting and marking written timed exams?
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://oakroadsystems.com/
"My theory was a perfectly good one. The facts were misleading."
-- /The Lady Vanishes/ (1938)
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