Re: [Phys-L] Evaluation tests

[Philip Keller <pkeller@holmdelschools.org>]

On 12/17/2013 4:39 PM, Ze'ev Wurman wrote:
> And remember what started this thread. It is NOT ABOUT SOLVING THE 
> PROBLEM, IT IS ABOUT THE PREDICTIVE POWER OF THE PROBLEM. 


Taking that to heart, I wonder if these tests are worth giving.  If the 
goal is to do a service to students who sign up but with little chance 
of earning a c or better, I suspect that there is a lot of information 
available with more predictive power: grades in previous science 
classes, high school gpa, even math SAT score might do a better job than 
what has been proposed so far.  But to find out, you would have to check 
the data.

But I am not sure that is our role to make these predictions.  If a 
student has a destination in mind and physics is one of the requirements 
along the way, then despite what my (admittedly fuzzy) prediction model 
would say, my first instinct is to say come on in and be prepared to 
work hard.