Thanks to all of you for your valuable opinions on this matter.  As a matter of 
fact, i had graded as you suggested, which brought about an argument between 
the instructors at the Central Level of my institution and myself.  They are 
questioning my evaluation criteria, I am questioning their level of knowledge.

Thanks once again,
jose romero.

--- On Wed, 7/14/10, Giles Warrack <[email protected]> wrote:

From: Giles Warrack <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [R-sig-teaching] a statistic-teaching question
To: "jose romero" <[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 11:44 AM

could you give us an idea of the qualifications (degrees etc) of the person who 
set the exam?

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 9:21 AM, jose romero <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear R-teaching list:



I would like to put forward for your consideration an issue which is not R 
related, but statistics-teaching related.  Although i know full well that this 
list is intended for discussion of the use of R in teaching statistics, I also 
know that most (if not all) of you out there are highly qualified statistics 
teachers, and as such, I'd like to know your opinion on this issue:




As a statistics instructor in a open university (distance education), part of 
my job functions consist in grading exams written at the central level in my 
institution and presented by students nationwide.  Recently, i had to grade an 
exam of which the first two questions ran like this (again, i did not write 
this exam):




1) The following is a sample of the duration (in minutes) of time intervals 
between queries to a data base:



    91    86    71    79    51    51    67    60    79    85

    68    86    53    45    86    71    82    88    72    67

    51    51    75    81    76    80    75    76    82    49

    66    83    84    82    84    76    53    75    70    55



What is the probability that the mean time between queries is more than 72.5 
minutes?



2) For a certain region of the country, the rainfall measurements (in mm) 
during the last 15 years are the following:



    580    575    400    750    428    636    825    360

    850    590    875    735    920    950    550



What is the probability that the average rainfall during the last 15 years is 
less than 625 mm?





Considering that these are exam questions for an introductory statistical 
inference course (non bayesian), what are your objections, as a teacher, to the 
way these questions are posed?  If you had to grade exams with such questions, 
and it is not in your power to cancel this exam and re-schedule for another 
one, how would you grade your pupils? 




Once again, please excuse me for posting these non-R related and very absurd 
questions for your consideration.  However, i'd really like to know the 
experts' opinion on this.



Thanks in advance,



josé romero







        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]




_______________________________________________

[email protected] mailing list

https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching





-- 
Giles & Luba Warrack
2412 Springwood Drive
Greensboro, NC 27403-2030
(336) 292-9272 (home)
(336) 202-0893 (Luba cell)
(336) 686-5330 (Giles cell)

Skype: warrack56


        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

_______________________________________________
[email protected] mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching

Reply via email to