[EM] makeshift combinations

[Forest Simmons]

Richard,

The department chair for my first teaching position was someone who had
done his master's thesis on the efficacy of True/False tests for assessing
student proficiency levels in mathematics.

The thesis that his work seemed to support was that a well designed T/F
test with sufficiently many well chosen statements was just as reliable
statistically .(as a predictor of success on standardized tests) as tests
that gave students partial credit based on their written progress towards
the correct answers of the respective "problems," etc.

I never followed his advice to use them because I liked the student/teacher
interaction over student work ... and it was easier for me to quickly come
up with ten problems that would thoroughly test the students' proficiency
on the material in question than to carefully construct a 400 statement T/F
test with the same information potential.

But I can see the value of T/F and multiple choice tests for placing
multitudes of students at the right level when their last math class was
ten years ago, and no mathematician is available to interview them.

I would compare narrowing down a field of California governor wannabes to
this rough placement level problem ... quick and dirty may be the right
bang for the buck.

Best Wishes,

Forest




On Sat, Aug 26, 2023, 4:39 AM Richard Lung <voting at ukscientists.com> wrote:

>
> Combining an approval vote with a preference vote is an example of a
> makeshift combination method. It cannott be justified but it is
> attempting to do something better, not amenable to existing methods.
>
> Approval voting is really classificatory voting. That is to say a
> classical logic black or white, all or nothing, approval or rejection
> vote. Yes, approval voting seems to be being tried as rejection or
> elimination voting.
>
> This corresponds to the first thing HG Wells said about that other
> classificatory vote, the x-vote: We no longer have elections in this
> country (UK) we only have Rejections. (1912. The Labour Unrest).
>
> A preference vote covers opposites and everything in between. But it is
> only used as an election. Preference voting can, however, also be used
> in an exclusion count, including the whole range of dislikes and likes.
> That is the system I invented.
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Lung.
>
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> info
>
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