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Re: [Phys-l] Sir, Can We Do Something Easier?

"Nobel's (apostrophe denotes plural of a proper name) and NAS membership are, I suggest, measures of effective learning."

I beg your pardon.

This site disagrees:


http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm



When a family name (a proper noun) is pluralized, we almost always simply add an "s." So we go to visit the Smiths, the Kennedys, the Grays, etc. When a family name ends in s, x, ch, sh, or z, however, we form the plural by added -es, as in the Marches, the Joneses, the Maddoxes, the Bushes, the Rodriguezes. Do not form a family name plural by using an apostrophe; that device is reserved for creating possessive forms.

This one is adamant:

Apostrophes are never used to form the plural of any proper noun.

The Herberts will attend.

not: The Herbert's will attend.


http://creativeservices.iu.edu/resources/guide/os.shtml


In the case of Nobel prizes, perhaps Nobel's is OK to indicate the contraction. This is the reverse of the post.

bc, liceman.




Jack Uretsky wrote:

I will try to clarify my statements so that John and I can talk TO instead of ACROSS each other.


On Fri, 18 Aug 2006, John Clement wrote (in relevant part):


The original posting did not give any statistics about the performance of
the students, just that the enrollment in physics was high.


It gave the size of the school and the number of teachers.
In this area, 3 physics teachers is unusual for a public high school of that size.

But beyond

subsequent performance,


Which is not the topic, The topic is fun, which translates into getting students to take the course.


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I question whether FCI scores serve as an efficient proxy for
effectiveness of physics teaching. There are no Nobel prizes for high FCI
scores. Traditional physics teaching has given us a number of Nobel
Laureates of whom three were fellow graduate students - one of the Nobel's
was in economics. But maybe looking at Nobel's is a little restrictive.
Another possible measure is membership in the National Academy of
Sciences. By my not very careful count, a PhD from Princeton's Physics
department practically guarantees election to the NAS. As best as I can
tell from my own experience (here I wax anecdotal) FCI gains track
closely with scores on weekly quizzes and Final Exams (which I usually use
old AP exams for).

Actually FCI scores do not track that well with conventional exams.


Yes, John, they did track that well in my classroom and I have the records to support that conclusion (I have a vague memory of having once posted some of those records).

Eric

Mazur showed that quite clearly.


Eric Mazur did not give my weekly quizzes, his students did not take my course, and he did not give the AP final. So Eric Mazur's experience is irrelevant to my conclusion from my experience.

It is true that there are no Nobels for

FCI scores, but there are also no Nobels for AP exam performance.
Considering the time lag for Nobels, it is doubtful that any of the current
candidates could have even been given an FCI, so this is not a relevant
argument.


This totally misses the point. The point I am trying to make is that we don't know enough about the subsequent performance of people with
high FCI gains to use such gains as a measure of effective learning. Nobel's (apostrophe denotes plural of a proper name) and NAS membership are, I suggest, measures of effective learning. Many people in the latter two categories are products of schools with very traditional science courses. In my case, I didn't know much about elementary physics until I got to graduate school.


> There are also no Nobels for raising student thinking from low to

high levels.




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