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Re: American students do poorly in math and science



Margaret,
I used Adobe Acrobat 3.0 and saw the same numbers as on the Web Page. If
you subtract 10 from each of the Australia numbers, the order then appears
correct. But other countries seem out of order also. The pdf version
didn't address this apparent discrepancy.
As to the comment about US physics, I interpret that to mean that even
though the US is lower than all countries, that difference is significant
when compared to all countries except Austria; that is the difference
between US and Austria scores is not a "statistically significant" difference.
Lynn

At 10:05 AM 2/26/98 +0000, you wrote:
I've had a look at these, of course wanting to see the
details on how Australia's kids went. The tables are very odd though
- have a look at the ones for Mathematics & Science literacy, and
Advanced Mathematics. Australia gets ranked below countries which
appear to have lesser scores.

What's more, in the Physics table, the US is shown to be last (below
Austria) - but the preamble above the table says that
" The United States had significantly lower achievement than every
country except Austria."

The reason for these apparent errors may be described in the full
report, but my acrobat reader plug-in can't cope with it. If these
are errors though, it makes me wonder about the rest of the
information in the tables (and the headlines on the report in our
newspapers today) ...

Cheers
Margaret


The results (read them and weep) from the TIMSS can be found at:

http://wwwcsteep.bc.edu/TIMSS1/HiLightC.html

Mark

Dr. Mark H. Shapiro
Physics Department
California State University, Fullerton
P.O. Box 6866
Fullerton, California 92834-6866

Phone: ++ (714) 278-3884 PCS: ++ (714) 350-3575
Fax: ++ (714) 278-5810
e-mail: mshapiro@fullerton.edu





Dr. Margaret Mazzolini
Astrophysics & Supercomputing Group
School of Biophysical Sciences and Electrical Engineering
Swinburne University of Technology
P.O. Box 218,
Hawthorn VIC 3122 Australia
email: mmazzolini@swin.edu.au
phone: (61 3) 9214 8084 fax: (61 3) 9819 0856


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Lynn K. Aldrich Phone: 717-674-6376
Asst Prof Physics email: laldrich@miseri.edu
College Misericordia FAX (8:30-4:30)
301 Lake St 717-675-4028
Dallas, PA 18612-1098 FAX 717-675-2441
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