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Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

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Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#161

Post by RA_Fisher »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #98
RA_Fisher wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quantification of learning horrifies this statistician. The belief that a standardized test is more objective than say a trained human assessor neglects the subjective nature of human makers of the test. It puts the humans behind a facade that creates the appearance of objectivity but not actual objectivity. The benefit of standardized tests is that they lower labor costs of assessment not that they increase the…

Your argument is that standardized tests are more biased than individual assessment? I find that hard to believe bordering on ridiculous. There's a great deal of evidence that standardized exams are less biased as there's a consistent standard of correct answer across the board. With individual assessment there's far too much room for "I know what you meant" to sneak in. This has come up a lot with job interviews; if…

Because standardized tests can be applied to such a large set, the biases of one test maker can be spread to many test takers. Contrast this with individual assessment where the biases of many test "makers" have an opportunity to cancel each other out. This is similar to the logic behind randomized assignment in randomized-control experiments. It's not that the mice are the same, it's that asymptotically their differences cancel each other out. I'd recommend this article: http://stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~rosenbap/heteroReprint.pdf

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#162

Post by drdeca »

jjoonathan wrote: post #144
thaumaturgy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thi…

> You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Note that I used the word "choice," indicating that I understood it to be a conscious decision rather than a lack of competence. > Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. What makes you think I used them as exc…

Honestly, I didn't notice that they didn't capitalize things, until it was pointed out.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#163

Post by RA_Fisher »

toast0 wrote: post #105
Godel_unicode wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is that standardized tests are more biased than individual assessment? I find that hard to believe bordering on ridiculous. There's a great deal of evidence that standardized exams are less biased as there's a consistent standard of correct answer across the board. With individual assessment there's far too much room for "I know what you meant" to sneak in. This has come up a lot with job interviews; if…

The argument is that an exam with free form answers is a more objective measure of knowledge than a multiple choice exam. Not an argument about bias. I think it depends on the subject matter, especially interpretation of art is hard to have one correct answer, an essay test could be graded upon support for the argument etc, where a multiple choice test is really "what did the authors of the test think the author inte…

Agreed. Unless we're talking about math (logic proofs), we should probably stop using the term, "objective." It's sloppy thinking.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#164

Post by RA_Fisher »

coldcode wrote: post #11

I still can't understand how standardized testing is useful for anything. The only true result of an educational system isn't apparent until years later. I assume it's popular for political and business reasons (testing companies are all for profit) which ultimately have nothing to do with children learning.

Bingo! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13351089

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#165

Post by justifier »

jjoonathan wrote: post #152
justifier wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13251451 i also avoid negative constructions.. look through my comment history you will find it is completely devoid, except now for this comment, of any instances of using: no, not, never, none do you think plato lacks credibility? have you ever read classics(o) in their original languages? theywereflippantinevenusingspacesbetweenwords(i) i would ask that if you care to develop a…

Did you fail the essay because the teacher disagreed with your core claim or because you used the essay as a vessel for an irrelevant grammatical crusade?

honest answer to your question: i followed grammar you would have been proud of for this submission so i assume my grammar had little affect on the grade

but seriously, is that how you want to judge? and how you think people should be judged?

am i the crusader? i am just writing how i like to write, and instead of engaging with the material people question how i present my opinion?

if i were commenting on every comment: why are you using this tired grammatical dogma that is ill suited for the immediacy of our main contemporary publishing platform; then i could agree with your sentiment, but instead this effort to uphold an assumed status quo seems the real crusade here

i am sorry my punctuation offends you, i wish there was a way that i could write how i want to write and you could read it how you want to read it

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#166

Post by pessimizer »

jjoonathan wrote: post #144
thaumaturgy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thi…

> You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Note that I used the word "choice," indicating that I understood it to be a conscious decision rather than a lack of competence. > Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. What makes you think I used them as exc…

Why would you waste your time on advertising your disapproval to obviously intentional cutesy capitalization when there was content to the post? That's like getting fixated on the color of the ink that something was written in. Or not listening to someone who stuttered, or had an accent.

> Purposefully employing bad grammar in a post about English

If this post was about English, everything said in English is about English. The post was explicitly about meaning.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#167

Post by QuercusMax »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #101
cderwin wrote: post #6

If she had known the answer, would that make the question any better? I remember back when I was in high school, I always sort of assumed that the authors of the poems we were tested on wouldn't be able to answer the ridiculous questions on our assessments. But even if they did, I've never been able to figure out what skills these questions were testing. If poems are open to interpretation, isn't it reasonable to thi…

This reminds be of a hilarious problem I once had analyzing a poem in french lit class. Read this and tell me what you think (in english and french)? http://fleursdumal.org/poem/120 I thought the entire poem was sexual -- singular tree being a euphamism for a phallus, and the waves of the sea reverberations of an orgasm. I was given an F and sent to the principal's office. It was then and there that I decided that ma…

It says "singular trees", which I interpret as meaning "unique" or "exotic", not "only one". There's definitely more than just what you were reading there; a fair amount of symbolism (sails and rigging? sailors chanteys?).

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#168

Post by bryanrasmussen »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #133
jjoonathan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you omit capital letters and periods and misuse ellipses in a post which attacks academic English? These choices would be annoying enough in any post but for this one in particular they undermine your credibility.

You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thi…

didn't he rather call into question someone's claim to be a race car driver based on seeing them not using their turn signal in conditions where use of the turn signal is generally expected?

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#169

Post by thaumaturgy »

jjoonathan wrote: post #144
thaumaturgy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thi…

> You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Note that I used the word "choice," indicating that I understood it to be a conscious decision rather than a lack of competence. > Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. What makes you think I used them as exc…

Alright, I wrote my reply to you in good humor, but you've clearly taken it personally, so I'll write more plainly.

You're essentially bikeshedding [1] here. 'justifier' wrote an interesting comment that had some actual substance to it, and now you and I are engaged here in a pissing match over the value of its grammar and punctuation, and we're doing that because neither of us is well-enough educated on the actual topic of 'justifier's comment to respond substantively to it but yet we both want to express an opinion about it.

It's an ugly, ugly habit that I see a lot in HN comments, whether it's in reply to a long-form essay or in reply to a newly announced startup or a new programming language. It discourages comments and participation from more thoughtful people because they can expect whatever they write to get henpecked by other people who, having no mastery of the actual subject matter, turn instead to the most trivial-to-understand bits and pieces.

I picked on you at random to try to discourage that behavior a little. And since I'm contributing to that problem now myself, this'll be my last word about it today.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#170

Post by toast0 »

Noseshine wrote: post #109
toast0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's likely that you will understand the second assembly language you learn much better than the first, it could be better that you learn a commercially dead language first. Alternatively, the 68HC11 is a very simple architecture, making it easy to learn the essence of assembly. Using an architecture with more capabilities will be easier than learning to do without. (although cycle counting on an architecture with…

it could be better that you learn a commercially dead language first. Why? It does not follow from your argument, you just make that claim - one that I find very strange.

Because you will not learn the first assembly as well, code you write in the first language is going to be worse than what you write in the second language you learn (even after you learn the second one). It is better to learn one and throw it away.
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