To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades • Hacker News Board

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#41

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:18 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #25

hliyan wrote: post #4

In other words, you get what you measure. This is one of the reasons I discourage measuring team performance in terms of bug counts or lines-of-code. The former lead to what some call "issue-tennis" and informal fixes, and the latter lead to code bloat. After years of trying, I've finally concluded that "key performance indicators" attached to individuals or teams (as opposed to artifacts and periods) usually leads t…

Here's the obligatory Dilbert -> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/ This sounds like a cheating problem, not a measuring problem. The same things happens when people try to measure schools. My sense is you can't give up on measuring things, because you can't scale an organization without metrics. You just have to balance them with understanding what is really going on. Or rather you need to have the metrics…

> The same things happens when people try to measure schools.

I think you have this a bit backwards - the cheating is actually the symptom of people trying to measure stuff in schools and then make those measures directly affect social status and future success of students. Cheating exists because the system doesn't reward you for learning the material, but for passing a test.

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#42

Post by sp332 » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:26 PM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #33

mathattack wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the obligatory Dilbert -> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/ This sounds like a cheating problem, not a measuring problem. The same things happens when people try to measure schools. My sense is you can't give up on measuring things, because you can't scale an organization without metrics. You just have to balance them with understanding what is really going on. Or rather you need to have the metrics…

You can't give up on measuring things, but you don't have to let people know what you are measuring or make the measure materially to them. That's there the trouble starts.

How do you know if the soldiers you have assigned to a project are any good without testing them?

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#43

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #32

mathattack wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the obligatory Dilbert -> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/ This sounds like a cheating problem, not a measuring problem. The same things happens when people try to measure schools. My sense is you can't give up on measuring things, because you can't scale an organization without metrics. You just have to balance them with understanding what is really going on. Or rather you need to have the metrics…

What metrics does an ant hill use?

[deleted]

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#44

Post by sp332 » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:29 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #38

chiph wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You go first.

Half the world doesn't have nuclear weapons, they seem to be doing just fine http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-weapon-free_zone

Ukraine gave up their nukes on condition that their borders be respected, and look what happened.

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#45

Post by EGreg » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:29 PM UTC

"As a team, they need to make the right decisions, but as individuals they're not required to be perfect."

So why not let them cheat like they do? That's teamwork.

Better yet why not have a computer program remember all these codes instead?

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#46

Post by 616c » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:37 PM UTC

protonfish wrote: post #37

616c wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I was in language courses in Cairo for a while. I was the only language major; all the other students were students from my university in a specialized diplomacy and government service track. Unlike me, they had to pass language proficiency exams, in a language of their choosing, or they did not graduate until they did. So, I had a great teacher. He did not care about grades at all. He would give bad grades, and w…

I graded like this when I taught community college and most students hated it. What surprised me is that it was not enough for a student to get an "A" - they wanted better grades than the other students, like it was a competition.

Because kids are sad sad sad. Haha. I also work in an educational institution doing IT. This, as you get from my anecdote above, was not my educational background.

It is funny people laugh when they hear me bust out into Arabic in front of them. I told them I am a language major by trade, and did IT in college to make money. Many people congratulate on mastering these "magical bodies of knowledge that are witchcraft, because surely I (the person I am helping) could never get it." If you want scary, these are other people married to Arab men and women, as am I. Decades of exposure mean nothing.

Now why is that? Grades breed mediocrity. Good students stroke their ego, and most students give up when they cannot compete with good students. So we encourage people to believe "I am a magician that speaks computer" and "Arabic is impossible" (if you beleive that, try teaching and explaining inconsistent English grammar; Arabic has encoded in the morphology a lot of syntax that would scare you into seeing what is like a human programming language) and accept mediocrity because evaluation and rank is more important than effort. I see it so often, even from students, I mess with them when they come to my office. I never bitched to change my grades. Why? I was busy reading. Who cares!

Please keep being that professor, I hope you save some of them. What is the most cautionary part of that tale is the people in my story all end working for government, some as counter-terrorism and intel guys. They cannot string a sentence together in Arabic, despite the A, and dictate USG policy "on dem terrorist A-rabs" so this culture will get us a real far.

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#47

Post by mathattack » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:48 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #41

mathattack wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the obligatory Dilbert -> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/ This sounds like a cheating problem, not a measuring problem. The same things happens when people try to measure schools. My sense is you can't give up on measuring things, because you can't scale an organization without metrics. You just have to balance them with understanding what is really going on. Or rather you need to have the metrics…

> The same things happens when people try to measure schools. I think you have this a bit backwards - the cheating is actually the symptom of people trying to measure stuff in schools and then make those measures directly affect social status and future success of students. Cheating exists because the system doesn't reward you for learning the material, but for passing a test.

I was thinking more of the cases where the teachers and principals change the students test scores to pass state exams.

Here is one example of many -> http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/02/justice/georgia-cheating-scand...

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#48

Post by mathattack » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 3:48 PM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #33

mathattack wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the obligatory Dilbert -> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/ This sounds like a cheating problem, not a measuring problem. The same things happens when people try to measure schools. My sense is you can't give up on measuring things, because you can't scale an organization without metrics. You just have to balance them with understanding what is really going on. Or rather you need to have the metrics…

You can't give up on measuring things, but you don't have to let people know what you are measuring or make the measure materially to them. That's there the trouble starts.

The challenge is then you lose accountability, and the ability for people to work on what they are weak at.

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#49

Post by melling » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #4

In other words, you get what you measure. This is one of the reasons I discourage measuring team performance in terms of bug counts or lines-of-code. The former lead to what some call "issue-tennis" and informal fixes, and the latter lead to code bloat. After years of trying, I've finally concluded that "key performance indicators" attached to individuals or teams (as opposed to artifacts and periods) usually leads t…

Counting lines of code went out of style 30 years ago.

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...

Re: To Stop Cheating, Nuclear Officers Ditch the Grades

#50

Post by watwut » Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 4:47 PM UTC

protonfish wrote: post #37

616c wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I was in language courses in Cairo for a while. I was the only language major; all the other students were students from my university in a specialized diplomacy and government service track. Unlike me, they had to pass language proficiency exams, in a language of their choosing, or they did not graduate until they did. So, I had a great teacher. He did not care about grades at all. He would give bad grades, and w…

I graded like this when I taught community college and most students hated it. What surprised me is that it was not enough for a student to get an "A" - they wanted better grades than the other students, like it was a competition.

While the relative grade does not matter in some majors, it may matter in others. They can influence internships or scholarship accessible to you.

It matters a lot when student wants to study medicine. Law firms look at grades when selecting graduates. If you want to go to grad school, your grades matter a lot too.

So, in a sense, grades are real competition.