Re: [Phys-L] Inference Lab Design

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

On 2012, Aug 19, , at 12:58, John Denker wrote:

> I have personally made this mistake often enough to know rather well
> what it looks like:  I assign something that is intended to be a
> reasoning exercise, only to find out that for half the class it is
> merely a rote recall exercise, because they've seen it before.  This
> is a particularly prevalent problem in college-freshman classes and
> in first-year graduate classes, especially at institutions that draw
> students with a wide variety of backgrounds.
>
> This is one of the reasons why it is hard to create a low-budget
> "standardized" test of reasoning.  We desperately need good tests, but 
> we should not imagine that it is trivial to administer a nontrivial
> test.


You're not familiar w/ the Lawson test of scientific reasoning?  There is a Scantron version.

I agree.  I suspect it required years of testing, etc. to develop.


bc found it not easy!