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Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

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Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#131

Post by stochastic_monk »

lonelappde wrote: post #96
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid I would go out of my way to fail those tests. The whole curriculum was designed around them, meaning that even if we did score high, any funding gains would just be put towards training us to take the test. I thought the state was holding the school hostage, threatening to cut funds or shut them down if they ever stopped. We never learned anything about civics or American history. Until I was out of highscho…

Your school didn't teach slavery? What state?

It’s possible that there’s a difference between admitting it happened and an honest portrayal of the institution.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#132

Post by dcolkitt »

drngdds wrote: post #9

This is my first time learning that AI-graded essays are a thing. Am I the only one who thinks that's insane? I feel like you'd probably have to have an AGI to meaningfully evaluate an essay.

> I feel like you'd probably have to have an AGI to meaningfully evaluate an essay.

So the reason this isn't the case, is because there are very simple metrics that tend to highly correlate with essay quality. It doesn't mean the grading-bot is actually evaluating essay quality. It's just looking for properties that are statistically associated with good essays. Remember, at the end of the day as long as the bot's ranking is close enough to the human grader's ranking, nobody really cares about the internal logic.

A very straightforward example is spelling mistakes. People who make spelling mistakes aren't necessarily bad writers. And vice versa, there may be great speller who can't write for shit. But by and large the people who spell poorly also tend to write poorly. Easily detectable grammatical issues, like misplaced modifiers, subject verb disagreement, or inconsistent tense, are also correlated indicators.

A very simple metric is essay length. Especially if its a timed exam. Good writers tend to have verbal fluidity, with words easily flowing to paper. They don't struggle converting thoughts too sentences. So they tend to end up with the most words written down within a fixed time period. By and large the longer a timed essay is, the more likely that its actual quality is high.

Grading bots basically rely on these statistical relationships. They're not measuring anything intrinsic to good writing. But at the end of the day, their student rankings are usually pretty close to that of a typical human grader. In some cases the bot will have a closer ranking to a random human grader, than two random human graders will have to each other.

The biggest flaw here is Goodwin's law. When the test takers become aware of the kludges that the bots use, they can exploit it. For example just dump a bunch of verbal diarrhea with as many correctly spelled words as possible. But even then it doesn't really hurt the bot's ranking accuracy too much. Because the kids who do the most test-prep and learn all the tips and tricks, are usually high-achievers who do well on essays anyway.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#133

Post by dahart »

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said.

Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is both cheaper and faster. Note how the rationalizing ignores the needs of the students and the quality of the education.

I live in Utah and my children have been subjected to this automated essay scoring here. One night I came home from work and my son and wife were both in tears, frustrated with each other and frustrated with the essay scoring which refused to give a high enough score to meet what the teacher said was required, no matter how good the essay was. My wife wrote versions herself from scratch and couldn’t get the required score. When I got involved, I did the same with the same results.

Turns out the instructions said the essay would be scored on verbal efficiency; getting the point across clearly with the fewest words. I started playing around and realized that the more words I added, the higher the score, whether they were relevant or grammatical or not. Random unrelated sentences pasted in the middle would increase the score. We found a letter of petition online for banning automated scoring for the purposes of grades or student evaluation of any kind. It was very long, so it got a perfect score. I encouraged my son to submit it, and he did. Later I visited his teacher to explain and to urge her to not use automated scoring. She listened and then told me about how much time it saves and how fast students get feedback. :/

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#134

Post by aidenn0 »

crooked-v wrote: post #102
aidenn0 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's a deterministic method to score well on the math questions?

An essay is to a math problem as a proof is to a grammar problem.

There's definitely a deterministic way to score well on HS level proofs. Also, I think you are overestimating the requirements for an essay on a standardized test.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#136

Post by manfredo »

harry8 wrote: post #34
VikingCoder wrote: post #15

My mother worked grading standardized tests. It was a hellish job for many reasons (limited breaks, etc.) One question she had to grade was essentially, "What's something you want your teacher to know about you?" It was an essay answer, and she was supposed to grade it on grammar, etc. Just the mechanical aspects of writing. (The real question explained the details more, but that was the core of the question.) She sa…

Some of these will be 100% true as well. But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it can't come back to them. So how many are true and how many false? I have no clue. Literally none. And no it doesn't make me feel any better about the screams of existential agony even if that were a low percentage. Could be high too.

When I was a high school student, we had some state administered test in health class that tasked us with analyzing advertisements for liquor and tobacco and seeing if we could recognize harmful behavior that the ads might be promoting. This test had no impact on our class grade...

..which means students wrote whatever the hell we wanted. I was assigned a Captain Morgan (rum) ad. I wrote that the ad was glorifying maritime piracy and was likely responsible for pirate activity in Somalia.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#137

Post by crooked-v »

lopmotr wrote: post #126
fzeroracer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an image processing algorithm fails to recognize black people or worse, profiles them, how else should this be described but in terms of race? If you don't talk about the actual problem, how can you possibly expect to solve it?

There are many classes of people who have problems of discrimination. Short, ugly, ginger, etc. The intersections of all those classes are so numerous that everybody will have some disadvantage. But it won't be apparent unless you define their class and measure it.

That's just substituting in smaller or harder-to-define minority groups, though.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#138

Post by manfredo »

mxcrossb wrote: post #66
harry8 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these will be 100% true as well. But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it can't come back to them. So how many are true and how many false? I have no clue. Literally none. And no it doesn't make me feel any better about the screams of existential agony even if that were a low percentage. Could be high too.

I don’t know about calling it manipulative. I remember taking the ACT, and struggling to plan out one of my essays. It was something like “tell us about a book that inspired you”. So I changed details about the plot so it all fit nicely and was easy to write. I can see something similar here, where someone takes on a persona when writing in order to effectively communicate.

This is absolutely the case. In fact, my SAT prep class taught us that the factual veracity of our essays is irrelevant. Essay scores are almost entirely correlated with essay length as long as spelling, grammar, and basic paragraph structure (intro, body paragraphs, conclusion) is followed.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#139

Post by hanniabu »

inimino wrote: post #71
VikingCoder wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What my mom saw had an ID number on it. No other demographics. And she was grading from multiple states. So do what? Contact her local police? With a written accusation from a child? Is that enough to get a warrant to force the company to release the demographic information? And people don't work at a job like that because they want to. They work there because they need the money. Everything she took in and out of th…

> So do what? Contact her local police? Collect or photograph all the evidence, record every conversation with supervisors, escalate as much as possible internally, then contact local police, and at the same time go to the media. Don't quit, but if necessary let them fire you and then sue. None of this is easy.

When escalating I'm sure it'll be effective to say it'll be an interesting story for the news and how the incident is being blocked by supervisors that encourage child abuse.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#140

Post by hanniabu »

risubramanian wrote: post #13
saagarjha wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is cost-prohibitive for every essay to be graded by humans, then they should be dropped from the tests. Apparently it is. But everyone still wants writing to be assessed…

The SAT dropped the writing section a few years ago, and many schools don't care about the GRE writing score.

Finally, but then none of these new test takers will know what it feels like to get near perfect scores on the other sections of the test but then completely bomb the written portion and ruin your overall score.
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