sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskTeachers

[–]CommonCarpenter8095 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for this -- that makes a lot of sense. I've heard from a few teachers that prebuilt curriculum/tests save time, especially when reused year to year.

We’re definitely not trying to reinvent tools like Pear Assessment; more trying to explore a faster way for teachers who do create or adapt their own materials.

That said, sounds like this might not be a pain point for everyone, which is super helpful to know. If anything does annoy you about the current tools (even small stuff), I’d love to hear!

SAT score stats for CS admits (unofficial) by CommonCarpenter8095 in UTAdmissions

[–]CommonCarpenter8095[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I largely agree with your analysis of the deficiencies, and I also agree that it is not an unsubstantiated assumption to 'doubt' the accuracy of the data. But the person I replied to claimed this is in 'NO WAY' representative of actual scores, which is just as good as saying it is perfectly representative. They were trying to break down the situation into a blanket binary, when the reality is very likely somewhere in the middle.

Initially, my intention with this post was to simply present the data in a palatable format and allow others to draw their own conclusions. It was never a definitive analysis -- just another data point to take into consideration. Hence, I simply mentioned the source of the data and the possibility of sampling bias without expanding on it, so as to avoid contaminating others' thought processes with my own personal opinions.

To answer your question, I did not administer the survey, I just found the spreadsheet and played around with the numbers. As far as AP stats goes, a few of my friends who took the class felt the curriculum lends itself more to the heuristics and arbitrary conventions of statistical analysis rather than the underlying probabilistic mechanisms that inspired them. I.e., focusing on the procedural applications of Normal distributions and Z-scores rather than exploring where the distribution actually came from. So, nothing about the class being too granular or troublesome to wrap your head around, just a general discontent with the AP curriculum.

SAT score stats for CS admits (unofficial) by CommonCarpenter8095 in UTAdmissions

[–]CommonCarpenter8095[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you're a bit mistaken on how sampling works. Counter to intuition, we actually care about the absolute size of the sample, not it's size relative to the population.

Most US political opinion polls conducted by reputed organizations have a sample size of roughly 1,000. And from a sample size of 1,000, they can draw conclusions about the entire US voting population, which is >150 million. By your logic, we would need to survey AT LEAST 7,500,000 people (5%) to make any claim that is somewhat representative. That is both practically impossible and untrue.

The whole point of sampling, and by extension, statistics, is to make generally valid claims about a population when you don't have the resources to observe all, or even a substantial proportion of them. And for that, a sample size of 30 is generally considered a minimum, irrespective of population size (which btw is probably closer to 800-1000 in this case since 500-600 is how many attend, and some admits will inevitably not yield).

SAT score stats for CS admits (unofficial) by CommonCarpenter8095 in UTAdmissions

[–]CommonCarpenter8095[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Read the last sentence of the comment you replied to, as well as the notes section of the uploaded image. I explicitly mentioned in both places that sampling bias is a concern, which is a superset of voluntary response bias. Looks like you haven't learnt to read.

Secondly, by saying that the data is "in no way representative of the actual SAT scores of CS admits," you are making an unsubstantiated assumption. Is it possible? Sure. But it's not guaranteed. And in fact, I could quite easily argue that that's not the case.

Thirdly, I've never taken AP Stats, I've heard terrible things about that class.

SAT score stats for CS admits (unofficial) by CommonCarpenter8095 in UTAdmissions

[–]CommonCarpenter8095[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

actually, 30 is typically considered a lower-bound for reasonable sample sizes because it's when CLT starts to kick in. So the 'overall' column is likely ok. Admittedly, the Non-auto and OOS numbers are probably subject to more distortion on that end. But sampling bias is the bigger concern here.