Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Which is the odd one out and why?
a. CHIS
b. DENC
c. PORL
d. PERL
e. FRAP
f. SPAD
As reader davee123 points out…
“CHIS” is the only one whose letters are arranged in alphabetical order
“DENC” is the one with the lowest sum of its letters
“PORL” is the one with the highest sum of its letters
“PERL” is the only one that has a corresponding O’Reilly book
“FRAP” is the only one that begins with a letter that is only used once
“SPAD” is the only one that could be changed into a real word if its vowel were replaced with a “U”.
Tick one box to show a disadvantage of using a software package to help work out the budget rather than using a calculator, pen and paper.
The four options are:
1. The formulae could be wrong
2. The wrong prices could be input
3. A virus may corrupt the information
4. Multiple printouts could be produced
As the linked article goes on to clarify,
Answers 1 and 3 are both valid answers in our opinion, but the marking scheme insists that only answer 3 is valid.
Question 3 is one from my son’s math homework…
…write out in decimal form, the number one hundred and seventy-seven thousandths.
It fell to me to explain what the test-maker probably wanted when the boy started writing “100.077” over and over again.
These are not, I stress, the same as trick questions in which the test-maker methodically endeavors to deceive the test-taker, and assembles a trap that can be escaped only by those with a robust command of the concepts involved.
These are questions on which the test-maker remains blissfully ignorant of the fact that a question can be reasonably interpreted in a plurality of different ways. In order to answer the question correctly, with a potential greater than random chance, there must be a virtual empathy between the test-taker and the test-maker. At that point, the test-taker is being assessed for his ability to anticipate what people want him to do, and not for his command of the concepts.
In fact, in that situation, a robust command of the concepts can interfere with passing the test, creating the possibility that on average the people successfully passing the test may have an inferior understanding compared to some of the people who failed.
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Yeah … my gut instinct on that question would’ve been to write 0.177
And, of course, then there’s this.
John McCain got money from the Oil Companies.
John McCain proposes giving Oil Companies $4 billion in tax breaks.
therefore: John McCain is “in the pocket” of Big Oil.
They left that little detail out that:
John McCain proposes to give ALL companies a tax break.
Oil Companies are companies.
Therefore, John McCain isn’t doing anything special for Oil Companies. Nothing he doesn’t propose doing for all companies.
$4 billion amounts to about a 3% tax break for the oil companies, from about 73% down to “only” 70%.
Kinda changes your understanding of what it is they’re trying to get you to swallow. Because they left out important information. Kind of like the vague test questions.
Of course, Barack Obama got money from Oil Companies too. Which isn’t mentioned.
- philmon | 08/28/2008 @ 17:59About number 3…
It is a piece of math pedantry that the only place you see “And” in a number written as text is where you would see a decimal point in the number written numerically.
People drop an “And” into any place in a spoken number where they feel the need to separate categories…millions to thousands, millions to units, thousands to hundreds, etc. I suspect that the textbook author knew this, and deliberately put that particular question in.
- karrde | 08/28/2008 @ 20:11I suspect you might be right about that. So “one hundred and seventy-seven thousandths” should indeed be 100.077 but “one hundred seventy-seven thousandths” would be 0.177.
Trouble with that is, though, that in context of the rest of the questions, it doesn’t seem the emphasis was on this kind of linguistic nit-picking. It was all solidly math-concept.
And thinking on it some more (the brain juices thicken to the consistency of pea soup when you’re in your forties), I’m thinking maybe I stuck in the “and.” It might not have existed on the original paper. According to your theory, that would change everything.
Still and all, it seems we’re noodling this stuff out more than we should have to, for a simple test like this.
- mkfreeberg | 08/28/2008 @ 21:33“SPAD” is the only one that could be changed into a real word if its vowel were replaced with a “U”.
Speaking of pedantry and pedants… (raises hand, waves it around) SPAD, although technically an acronym, is a word…in common usage. Eddie Rickenbacker flew one (a SPAD S.XIII, to be entirely accurate) in Big Bang One, and quite successfully, too, winning the MOH as a result of his 26 kills.
- Buck | 08/29/2008 @ 00:26Full marks for the boy. A good math teacher would have used the answer to further instruction. This reminded me of one of my math prof’s. I wrote down the equation to a problem incorrectly yet solved that new problem.
His response on my paper, “I do worry about your reading comprehension, but I do not worry about your ability to solve mathematematical problems, so I’ve given you a full score on this.”
- Allen L | 08/29/2008 @ 01:46That’s a quality teacher right there. Not only did he make the best decision, but he defined the situation exactly as it existed, and quite eloquently too.
The concern I have is that since that isn’t how things are being handled today, society has hit a point where the whole point of the exercise is that virtual empathy between test-taker and test-maker. Some people have a natural talent for this empathy, having developed it at the expense of the development of actual comprehension. Questions like these, they’ll answer correctly, not even comprehending there was any ambiguity involved at all — failing to understand how anyone could’ve been confused.
Their counterparts, who understand the material and therefore can see more than one valid way to answer, are put in a position of having to guess and therefore scoring on par with random chance; that’s to be taken as a sign of someone who does not know the material.
- mkfreeberg | 08/29/2008 @ 07:07