Careful with that Koolaid • Hacker News Board

Re: Careful with that Koolaid

#21

Post by thedufer » Fri, May 16, 2014, 4:44 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #18

thedufer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nope, I've carefully looked at MIT's history of grade inflation (the info is online) Citation? Every source I can find shows that a) they haven't released average GPAs since 2000 and b) from 1950-2000 they inflated grades at or above the average national rate.

Source was as I remember The Tech , MIT's student newspaper, but I can't find it right now, it was a raw data series. This '75 article starting on page 5 http://tech.mit.edu/V95/PDF/V95-N11.pdf covers '62-'72, but the data I looked at went quite a bit further. If you're really interested I can try harder. Note that you should throw out results from the '50s and a bit further, when science and especially math educatio…

Yes, there are plenty of articles discussing MIT and grade deflation. Unfortunately, none of the ones I could find have any data - its all anecdotal from students. The hard data I did actually find (http://www.gradeinflation.com/) shows grade inflation at MIT matching that at Harvard (the media's favorite grade inflation target) almost perfectly from 1950-2000.

I never thought this before, but now that I've actually looked at what little data is available, it looks an awful lot like the MIT grade deflation thing is a myth.

Re: Careful with that Koolaid

#22

Post by hga » Fri, May 16, 2014, 5:15 PM UTC

thedufer wrote: post #21

hga wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source was as I remember The Tech , MIT's student newspaper, but I can't find it right now, it was a raw data series. This '75 article starting on page 5 http://tech.mit.edu/V95/PDF/V95-N11.pdf covers '62-'72, but the data I looked at went quite a bit further. If you're really interested I can try harder. Note that you should throw out results from the '50s and a bit further, when science and especially math educatio…

Yes, there are plenty of articles discussing MIT and grade deflation. Unfortunately, none of the ones I could find have any data - its all anecdotal from students. The hard data I did actually find ( http://www.gradeinflation.com/ ) shows grade inflation at MIT matching that at Harvard (the media's favorite grade inflation target) almost perfectly from 1950-2000. I never thought this before, but now that I've actuall…

Ah ha, this site is where the data series is, specifically: http://www.gradeinflation.com/MIT.html and my memory about The Tech is from where they got a lot of their data.

So, you're telling me, the GPA going down 1/100 of a point in the quarter century of 1976-2000, is evidence of grade inflation???

If you can seriously look at this time series, accounting for the two factors of better post-Sputnik math and science education and Vietnam War avoid the draft, or simply limit yourself to the period after both of those ('73-75 for the draft, by which time the upper level post-Sputnik reforms would have hit the applicants), then factor in that freshmen went from pass/fail to grades in their second term during this period, and say MIT has statistically significant grade inflation, we have no basis for a discussion.

Re: Careful with that Koolaid

#23

Post by thedufer » Fri, May 16, 2014, 9:25 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #22

thedufer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are plenty of articles discussing MIT and grade deflation. Unfortunately, none of the ones I could find have any data - its all anecdotal from students. The hard data I did actually find ( http://www.gradeinflation.com/ ) shows grade inflation at MIT matching that at Harvard (the media's favorite grade inflation target) almost perfectly from 1950-2000. I never thought this before, but now that I've actuall…

Ah ha, this site is where the data series is, specifically: http://www.gradeinflation.com/MIT.html and my memory about The Tech is from where they got a lot of their data. So, you're telling me, the GPA going down 1/100 of a point in the quarter century of 1976-2000, is evidence of grade inflation??? If you can seriously look at this time series, accounting for the two factors of better post-Sputnik math and science…

If we're allowed to pick and choose our time series, the quarter century before that MIT saw inflation at almost double that of the grade inflation poster child, Harvard.

Yeah, you can rationalize based on outside events, but without real data on how much of the change is actually attributable to those things, you're just fitting facts into your worldview. How do we know there aren't similar events in the quarter century you've chosen that are forcing deflation?