I guess I'm old fashioned but I've worked in business for many years as well as teaching both public high school and university courses.
If a decision is to be made. "Buy or no buy" and the cutoff point is set at some value such as 20 or lower then 20 becomes the cutoff point, not 20.1 If you need an 80 to pass a rifle test in the military, 79.99 is not good enough. 80 means 80. Rounding may be useful in some cases but when decisions are made based on some set value, then that set value must be achieved. If you jump from one roof to another and the distance between the two roofs is 20 feet, jumping 19 feet 11-1/2" doesn't make it. At my university to get a grade of 'A' or above, you must make a MINIMUM of 90, not 89.999. Too many students get into the habit of wanting grades rounded up, to get something for nothing. If a teacher feels that 89 should be moved to 90 because of some other factor, then fine, the teacher is making that decision. In business it doesn't quite work that way. If a machine must produce something and the limits are set, then if the machine fails to do what it must do, it FAILS and is stopped and fixed. The bigger problem is how do we evaluate students. If anyone comes up with that one, I would be glad to listen. If students were to get one point for each complete class attended then by counting the classes attended you can get a score. If you score a student using any type test...well...we all know the problem involved in that. It would be nice if all students could be evaluated on factors such as jumping from roof to roof but I don't think that we can produce tests of that type that the university would like. In business if a product is produced and must meet certain specifications, such as length, width, weight, breaking strength, and we can accurately measure those values then we may have a useful test for making decisions. Reminds me of the story of the private in the army. He was sitting around one day doing nothing. A sergeant saw him doing nothing and commanded in to carry a large pile of wood from one area to another. An hour later the sergeant returned to find the private sitting, doing nothing. "I told you to move the wood" "I did Serge." Sure enough the wood had been moved. "Well, then, take this paint the side of the building where the men bunk." Upon returning an hour later the private was sitting, doing nothing. "Hey, I told you to paint the building." "It is done," replied the private. "OK, help the cook unload the supplies." A half hour passed and the sergeant returned. Same story. Private resting, truck with the supplies, unloaded. "All right then, help the cook sort the potatoes. Good ones in this bin, bad ones in the garbage can." An hour passed and the sergeant returned to find the private lying on the ground, out cold. There were three potatoes in the good bin and one in the garbage. The sergeant woke the private. "I don't understand, you moved the wood in record time, painted the building perfectly and helped the cook unload the truck but you can't do this simple job. Why not?" "Its the decisions that are killing me." GOD BLESS AMERICA Dr. Robert C. Knodt 4949 Samish Way, #31 Bellingham, WA 98229 [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The Law of Gravity says no fair jumping up without coming down." -- Peter B. . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
