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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

#271

Post by dcolkitt »

ptx wrote: post #205
dcolkitt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ra…

I think you meant Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Haha, whoops. That mistake kind of changes the meaning...

Thanks for catching the mistake.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#272

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dahart wrote: post #133

> 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 b…

That really sounds like Utah, they have lots of students (due to LDS influences) with a conservative government (ditto), so the pupil/teacher ratio is insane. I can guess the teacher really doesn’t have any other choice.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#273

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

dcolkitt wrote: post #132
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 ra…

I can't disagree strongly enough.

>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.

This isn't true at all. Imagine you got a B or C on an essay that a human would have given an A to because you wrote it concisely and in plain language, or because you used language that's statistically correlated with being black. Does the fact that this is rare console you? "Sorry, but it's usually very close to the human grader's ranking." Close enough isn't good enough when you get the short end of the stick. "Sorry, you aren't going to get to go to the college you wanted because you use language statistically correlated with poor writing." Or just because you're different, so the statistical correlation doesn't apply to you, you filthy outlier. Just because it's a rare event doesn't make it okay.

In adulthood, this is like hiring or firing for work statistically correlated with good work. Remember when amazon rolled out the resume scorer? [0] Sure it was biased towards women, but it was close enough to human scores, so who cares about the internal logic?

>Grading bots basically rely on these statistical relationships. They're not measuring anything intrinsic to good writing.

At the end of the day, our goal here is to measure good writing. If the bots aren't measuring anything intrinsic to good writing, we shouldn't use them.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#274

Post by chessturk »

amiga_500 wrote: post #242
piokoch wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc? Who t…

Is the USA tenable going forward? Your cost of everything, value of nothing culture appears to be very destructive.

Not without change, but I'd argue further change is certain, and likely to be of large magnitude.

I do not know if it will be sustainable, but I doubt it will be static.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#275

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

anm89 wrote: post #35

To me this brings up the absurdity of having essays on standardized tests. What about an essay is standardized? It's a totally nonsensical premise. This always gets made into some kind of techluminati conspiracy for the machines to ingrain structural racism whereas it's pretty clear all the algorithms fail to do is improve an already bad situation stemming from a flawed premise.

It's nuts when you put it that way. To really standardize an essay, you'd have to give the prompt and argument to be made and just test their ability to turn it into prose.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#276

Post by chessturk »

ativzzz wrote: post #247
amiga_500 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the USA tenable going forward? Your cost of everything, value of nothing culture appears to be very destructive.

It's progress built on top of an assumption of never-ending, unsustainable growth. Unfortunately for everyone else much of the world has been dragged into the rat race along with us.

I'd argue that the expectation of perpetual population growth is one of the big problems (the unsustainability of social security bottlenecking at the baby boomers being an obvious example).

There is a compelling case for immigration for that sake alone.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#277

Post by LorenPechtel »

wickedsickeune wrote: post #191
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow this is pretty shocking. I can understand using automated systems for something like math problems, it makes sense. There’s (usually) one right answer. But essays? This should be banned.

I have often solved many hard math problems with very unconventional solutions (eg geometrical proof for algebraic problems). Trust me, a piece of software is decades away from being able to accurately determine the future of children and massively impact their self esteem / trust in society.

Unconventional solutions can stump human teachers, also. One day on a chemistry test I was being stupid about how to define "stereoisomer". I knew what it was (two compounds that are mirror images of each other), I was just having trouble expressing it properly. Running out of time I put down "two molecules that are identical if and only if you permit rotation through the fourth dimension." This is extremely unconventional but it is correct--except not only did the teacher not understand it but I couldn't find any help in the mathematics department, either.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#278

Post by chessturk »

rwbcxrz wrote: post #232
ALittleLight wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a child I was obsessed with the "grade level" function in Microsoft Word. It was a preference you could enable on spell check to tell you the "grade level" of your writing. Every essay I wrote, I'd always force myself to reach the max "12.0" grade level. While writing I'd struggle over word choice, sentence structure, rearranging paragraphs, working on my tone etc, all in pursuit of the 12th grade way to p…

> Personally, I feel the solution to insufficient teacher time is to use peer grading much more, and spot checks. Get kids to read and revise each other's works frequently, and teachers should aim to grade at least N papers per student where N is much less than the number of papers a student writes. That's how it's done in creative writing courses. I've always found it infinitely more helpful than only having feedbac…

Things like this story, Word's auto-grader, and Grammerly's style preferences are all surreal to me. We are asking a computer to validate prose meant for human consumption.

Not a reflection of physical reality like sensor data or even accounting information, but the method of communication explicitly invented for production and consumption by humans.

Of course feedback from humans is more valuable than feedback computers, it would be irrational/miraculous if anything was better at giving feedback than a human.

It is a shame it isn't self evident to instructors how poor of a solution this is, and how much better the results are when using critique by peers and instructors -- the classic way of doing things.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#279

Post by chessturk »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #277
wickedsickeune wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have often solved many hard math problems with very unconventional solutions (eg geometrical proof for algebraic problems). Trust me, a piece of software is decades away from being able to accurately determine the future of children and massively impact their self esteem / trust in society.

Unconventional solutions can stump human teachers, also. One day on a chemistry test I was being stupid about how to define "stereoisomer". I knew what it was (two compounds that are mirror images of each other), I was just having trouble expressing it properly. Running out of time I put down "two molecules that are identical if and only if you permit rotation through the fourth dimension." This is extremely unconven…

On one hand, I agree with you. I remember having to argue whether I showed my work or not by using imaginary numbers instead of standard formulas in high school physics.

But even with these examples, the path of appeal and rectification of mistakes is much easier with all humans involved. I fear soon people will side with the machine out of ignorance or to be justified in an incorrect stance.

The idea that we could be so poorly taught by broken automated systems, that we become incapable of detecting the system is broken seems like a possibility with AI that is much less likely in pure human systems of education (though not impossible).

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#280

Post by LorenPechtel »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #273
dcolkitt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ra…

I can't disagree strongly enough. >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. This isn't true at all. Imagine you got a B or C on an essay that a human would have given an A to because you wrote it concisely and in plain language, or because you used language that's statistically correlated with being black.…

The problem with the bots is that while they average agreement with the humans they can produce very different results. Fine if you're seeing how a school is doing, horrible if you're testing how a student is doing.
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