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RE: Uneven tests



Dear Jack:
Thanks for bringing up the question "what do you do with a
student who answers correctly the "A-questions" anbd bolws the
"C-question"?",problem also addressed by Tim Burgess. My joking
answer is: those are exceptions to the rule, and should be classi-
fied as paradoxes.
But the question is really deeper and brings us to the point:
what is the PURPOSE of the test? In my opinion, the purpose is to
find out what the student knows (and doesn't know). Once you found
this out, you should decide what grade to give. If, in a calculus
course, you ask students to differentiate 100 polynomials, you find out
almost nothing, on which base you then should grade them; no good!
And if you turn down the light and up the heat, you find out about
their physical endurance, which is NOT what you wanted to test.
Let's continue the little theory of tests and ask the question:
if a student does well on A-questions and bad on C-questions, why
could this happen and what does this indicate? Here we start specu-
lating but this is the INTERPRETATION of the test results, which in
my opinion is crucial. It could be that the student concentrated in
studying the difficult topics and disregarded the easy ones. Or it
could be that he (she) paid more attention to the difficuls ones and
just did some "silly" mistakes in the others. In this last case
you may forgive him (her) - everybody says occasionally 2+3=6, but
knows perfectly well that it is 5. In the first case you should not
forgive, since the easier topics may even be more basic and important
than the more difficult ones.
In conclusion: the important thing is the INFORMATION you get out
of the test, and a well designed test should MAXIMIMZE the information
you will get in order to assign meaningful grades.
To conclude, another joke. While students were working on a test,
I sometimes recommended them: "Don't try to copy the mistakes of
your neighbor, make your own mistakes".
Best regards Emilio