Until a few years ago, my university encouraged instructors to post
grades in alphabetical order by complete SSN. Not only did this compromise
students' grades, it also compromised their SSNs. Even when not
alphabetical, it can compromise grades and SSNs of some students, since the
first three digits of SSN identify the region of the country where the
student was a resident when the SSN was assigned. For example, if you were
the only student from Illinois in a class in a North Carolina University, it
would be easy to find your SSN and grades from the posted grades.
A few students are amazingly nosey about others' grades. I post class
statistics produced by PROC UNIVARIATE (SAS). Several years ago I learned
that one student had discovered that the data file was in alphabetical order
and she used observation numbers to learn other students' grades -- PROC
UNIVARIATE displays observation numbers beside its listing of the most
extreme scores, which, in a small class, can be all or almost all of the
scores. To prevent this from happening again, I had to tell PROC UNIVARIATE
to use identification numbers that were set equal to a constant.
Karl W.
.
.
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the
problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at:
. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ .
=================================================================
