As someone whose initials are Z and W, I tend to notice alpha sort a lot. Asking a friend whose initials are A and B about this, it's not something they ever noticed. I haven't noticed a grading/ranking difference, but far more frequently I'll hear that "oh, we ran out of item/time/etc. before we got to you", which has made me much more sensitive to issues of planning/organization.
U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
181–190 of 284 posts
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I don't think it really happens outside school, but school is pretty formative and it happens all the time in school.
It happens in your phone contacts when you’re deciding who to talk to. You’re starting with your Abrahams, Billys and Changs, probably rarely reaching out to your Xaviers, Yusufs and Zeldas about going out tonight because you’ve already assembled a crew by the time you reach the Mimis, Natashas and Ottos.
I don't think many people use their phone contact list like that.
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#183I propose one of the following: 1. Keep the present system of grading by alphabetical order 2. Record the order in which the papers are actually graded When the grading is done, the teacher assigns a point scale (A = 90, B = 80 or whatever) but the computer does a regression fit and removes the bias.
This is a great idea! Next time I mark a stack of exams I will also note the time of day that the mark was entered. I can then cross-reference this with how long I have been sitting between breaks, since my last meal, etc, etc. Unfortunately I will not have this opportunity until mid-fall 2024.
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of school I can’t think of even a single instance of alphabetical sorting of my name (I have a middle letter). What situations are you in that this comes up a lot?
I have a middle letter and also don't remember this happening much. We should ask people with later letters if they remember this more.
I'm a near last letter surname. It's not uncommon for arbitrary things to be sorted by name, but a ton of official things use surname ordering. There's things that also I tend to seem to be last on where I don't know the sorting method, but I suspect it isn't uncommon for someone to just throw in a sort somewhere (though it's also common to see people do things in a LIFO so disadvantage people who get shit done on time... My apartment renewal does that...). I also remember getting a PCR test in covid where they binned by last name.
I can just say I do remember being last in a lot of arbitrary and official things and seeing other friends just get done with it faster and have to waste less time sitting and waiting.
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I only had to deal with a small class, so backtracking was doable and I graded the papers in whatever shuffled up order they were turned in, otherwise there would have definitely been a bias. Grading papers in submission order just introduces a different bias, though. (For what it's worth, I'm in the same boat and I do the same, because I don't trust my ability to give the papers any true random sorting by hand, so…
Introducing a slight bias factor that is randomized each time results in a lower average bias compared to a bias factor that is the same every time. Plus, as these weren't take-home assignments, I think someone finishing earlier is more likely to be either someone who was already going to score well, or someone who was already going to make the most common errors.
> Introducing a slight bias factor that is randomized each time results in a lower average bias compared to a bias factor that is the same every time.
That's what I'm saying—it's reasonable to believe that the submission time is correlated with other factors, such as ability or confidence (though the effect can cut both ways, with extremely able students submitting early because they finish early or late because they are extra careful, and similarly for other factors). Thus, this isn't really randomization, just correlation with another factor than the name.
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#186I work in academia. When we grade exams, the order of the exams on the stack is the order in which they were collected in the room (people can sit wherever they like). For grading, we are usually 5 people in a single room, and everyone grades a specific exercise for consistency. The exams are getting shuffled heavily , with everyone just grabbing stacks, looking for exams where "their" exercise was not yet graded, an…
My strategy was to, like you said, grade problem by problem. Then for each problem, first find all those who got full marks. Then group the others into piles based on what mistakes they made. This ensures that everyone who made the same mistake(s) gets the same grade. It also tends to shuffle the order of the exams after every problem. Obviously you don’t need this strategy for simple multiple choice questions, and i…
Sibling comment already said so, but I want to emphasize - this requires two run-throughs (at least).
When I was grading homework, it took about 5 hours a week per class per run through. They didn't pay me enough to make sense for it to be 10 hours.
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#187I can explain why the kids with A names outperform the kids with Z names. As someone whose first and last names are both very early in the alphabet, I was always called on first or second when I was in elementary school and middle school. I always had to be there early. My friend whose name was very late in the alphabet learned he did not have to be ready for the first minute or two of class. He would be standing nea…
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Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like most inequities, those who are in the benefiting group frequently don't realize that privilege.
They realize (bring form to, make real) them, but don't realize (understand) them
This reminds me of cliques. I give them the definition: insight everyone can recite but nobody can act upon.
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some courses are only graded based on a small number of tests. I actually went to UM and a grade might be something like 30% midterm 60% final 10% homework (obviously different professors have different systems). In that case if you get unlucky just twice on the two tests you basically get the full penalty.
I'm not sure how much a +/- 0.3 (out of 100) deviation from average on a single course matters even if you end up dead first/last for both midterm and final in that example. I mean, it will matter sometimes. But it's (by far) not as big a deal as if it happens for all your courses. Still, yes, you could flip the order from midterm to final instead of randomizing both and the effect goes to more like +/- 0.1 out of 10…
Yes, that sort of mirror-sampling would reduce variance. The problem is, though, you need to know all the uses of randomness in order to properly counterbalance them, and these systems are already enough of a pain to use.
(For example, if you have two, you can simply swap: but what about other biases? like if it's broken in half to assign to 2 grades. Or what about if there are three exams? And what about balance across other courses? if you want to do variance-reduction and tricks like antithetic sampling, you need to know all this in order to structure it properly - get it wrong, and you may make things worse.)
So that's why simple random shuffling would be preferred. It allows total ignorance of all other uses (past present and future), handles all ordering biases, and can be done independent in parallel across arbitrary sets of courses/exams/grades/students.
Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happens in your phone contacts when you’re deciding who to talk to. You’re starting with your Abrahams, Billys and Changs, probably rarely reaching out to your Xaviers, Yusufs and Zeldas about going out tonight because you’ve already assembled a crew by the time you reach the Mimis, Natashas and Ottos.
I don't think many people use their phone contact list like that.
I wouldn't be surprised. It's very natural. Probably not for that specific use case but if for some reason you are actually going through the list then it's natural