Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average • Hacker News Board

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#151

Post by lotharbot » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:12 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #63

100timesthis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Harvard: The McGill of America" mmm and they didn't realize that McGill is in America too? May be the parent post has a point...

As a Mexican, I don't like it much either, but I'm also tired of trying to convince the world that America isn't the US. Here is some consolation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29g57XTYgLE

There are three [0] "America"s -- North, South, and United States of. Clarification is only required when context is inadequate to distinguish between them.

Similarly, "star" can refer to a shape, a celestial body, or a talented/lead performer or athlete. You wouldn't interrupt a conversation about sports to say "stars aren't just guys like LeBron James; Aldebaran is also a star." That would be asinine and obnoxious.

So please, out of respect for everyone's time and sanity, learn how to use contextual clues and stop trying to argue that "America isn't the US".

[0] OK, there are actually even more "America"s -- a band, multiple cities, ships, movies, etc. But the contextual clues in this post suggested we had "large regions of land" in mind, so I left the other forms of "America" for the footnote.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#152

Post by csours » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:17 PM UTC

rogerbinns wrote: post #142

sly010 wrote: post #80

Real story: In Hungary students are rated from 1 to 5, where 5 is the best score and 1 is the worst. During the semester you have multiple tests (both verbal and on paper) each giving you a score between 1 and 5. Your final score is the average of these rounded to an integer. These final scores are the only important measure when you apply to study further, nothing else matters. I had a [5,5,5] and had to take a verb…

In my first year of university we had to do a maths module. My final score was 120%. Imagine just many different broken and non-mathematical things have to go into that!

I graduated High School with a 6.022 GPA[1]! Texas is Awesome!

1. Normal max is 4.0, school gave extra credit for Advanced Placement and college concurrent courses.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#153

Post by pdpi » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #87

japhyr wrote: post #3

I teach high school, and a colleague of mine went to an education conference a couple weeks ago. She was sitting at a table with three elementary school teachers. They were talking about how to gauge student progress when the students had taken a 100-question test, and a 50-question test. None of the three teachers realized that you had to scale the test scores before making a comparison between the two tests. These…

The very same thing happened in Portugal, where the Ministry of Education's guidelines for gauging teacher performance included taking the mean of a test graded in percentage points with another evaluation on a 1 to 5 scale.. by adding them and dividing by two! Made even more embarrassing by the fact that the Minister is a mathematician.

He did what? Can you link a citation for that one please (pt is fine)?

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#154

Post by hawleyal » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #24

I think this is the biggest problem: > Some of their answers, like 16 and 18, were lower than any value in our sample. > Some of their answers, like 120, were higher than any value in our sample. It suggests that people not only don't know how to compute the average, they don't have a solid grasp of what the concept even means.

> means

Pun intended

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#155

Post by sp332 » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

hdctambien wrote: post #108

sp332 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like your school is suffering from grade inflation. The average grade used to be a C. (At my college, it still was.) If you tell the teachers that a C is a failing grade, they will not give a C grade to a student who's doing an OK job in their eyes.

Is it more useful for your grade to tell you how much of the topic you know in relation to the other students in your class (C = the average grade) or for your grade to tell you how much of the topic you know (A = you understand everything that was taught, B = you understand most of what was taught, C = you understand some of what was taught...) If you fit an entire class on a bell curve and give out 1 A, 2 B's, 4 C'…

How much of the topic I know? That would be vanishingly small for any grade before college, and barely a blip for classes in my major at the end of college. No, I don't think that's useful.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#156

Post by totony » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

olihb wrote: post #82

fidotron wrote: post #2

Underneath this is the simple fact that educational standards in Quebec are disgracefully bad. A frightening proportion of kids never graduate high school either, and making it into McGill is near the upper reaches of achievement for those that do. This is going to provoke a lot of kneejerk "but it's worse in [x]". No, in the developed world it's probably not. There are lots of dynamics unique to the Quebec situation…

As anything else, the situation is more nuanced. Quebec schools as a whole are pretty good: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorials/quebe... The problem is that good students are mostly in private schools and specialized programs (international programs) so "regular classes" in public schools contain a lot of low performing students and students with disabilities. My gf is a public high school teacher…

This. But this is not because "good students are mostly in private school", it is because public school is just bad.

I am a Quebec resident and I have been, for most of my high school, in a private school. I went one year to a public school: the level of education was SO poor and the students' motivation was the lowest I had ever seen.

There is an huge disrepency between public/private sector and people are trying to cut down private school funding[1].

I've seen both, and public school is a disgrace, no kid should have to go through this. I've seen teachers insulting students (and vice versa), teachers being hangover on a class day and telling the students to read their book, teachers raging against students (and vice versa) and just classes being generally content-less.

[FR] [1] http://www.lapresse.ca/le-soleil/opinions/editoriaux/201407/...

EDIT: Not saying we should abolish public school, but it HAS to improve. My experience (and what I have seen of people going into higher eduction) was horrible. Private school has good students because it has (majorly) good teachers (and some selection, I admit), whereas public school has a dominance of bad teachers.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#157

Post by 100timesthis » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #63

100timesthis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Harvard: The McGill of America" mmm and they didn't realize that McGill is in America too? May be the parent post has a point...

As a Mexican, I don't like it much either, but I'm also tired of trying to convince the world that America isn't the US. Here is some consolation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29g57XTYgLE

I was depressed mostly by the very lame message, I just find it sad.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#158

Post by olihb » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #101

olihb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anything else, the situation is more nuanced. Quebec schools as a whole are pretty good: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorials/quebe... The problem is that good students are mostly in private schools and specialized programs (international programs) so "regular classes" in public schools contain a lot of low performing students and students with disabilities. My gf is a public high school teacher…

So if 60% of the 80% condemned to use the public school system are failing to achieve the already lowered standards this is mere nuance? What you have in Quebec is an elite (both english and french speaking) that gifts their children a private bilingual education with actual competition while they actively deny those rights to the rest of the public. Poor monolingual french speakers are actively screwed from birth to…

I'm just saying that we must be careful citing CSDM numbers because they represent a special situation. The CSDM have a lot of first generation immigrants, poor students, students with learning disabilities, etc. The middle class students are in good schools in the suburbs or in private schools.

The CSDM in Montreal has such a bad reputation that if you're not accepted in a specialized program (let say, international baccalaureate), you go to a private school if you can afford it (4k$/year). And don't let me start about union rules for new teachers...

On the other hand, if you're a special ed teacher, CSDM is hiring like crazy. Not so much for math, social science, french, English teachers though.

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#159

Post by keithpeter » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #96

keithpeter wrote: post #90

UK has tests in Mathematics and in English for anyone who wants to take teacher training for schools (not needed for 'post compulsory' or pre-school yet). http://sta.education.gov.uk/ Might be fun to try the practice tests out on colleagues... Helping managers to aggregate pass rates per class into an overall pass rate used to be a fun thing to do many years ago. They are better at data management now because of our…

I'm in the UK, and I don't think it's fair to be singling out teachers on this. I work with retailers - we make eCommerce systems - and I never cease to be staggered at how many CFOs/finance people/buyers/business owners don't: - Know the difference between "gross" and "net" when talking about prices, tax, or margin. - Know how to calculate a percentage. What's 10% off £90? No idea. - Virtually all fall for the "mark…

"Virtually all fall for the "mark it down by 10%, then mark it up by 10%... same price!" fallacy."

That is a classic GCSE Foundation Maths exam question: and I have to say most of the teenagers I teach can explain why you won't get back to the same price!

I wasn't singling out teachers myself but the OA looks as if it was. There is an honest desire to improve things over the next 10 years in the UK and all main parties agree about the general policy if not the detail so I am slightly optimistic (but teachers have to be)

Re: Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average

#160

Post by hawleyal » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

klenwell wrote: post #6

Could they figure out how to do it in less than 5 minutes if the stakes really mattered? I agree calculating averages is a pretty basic skill that I find has many day-to-day applications. But this also smells like a lighter version of the trick interview question. Which is to say, I'm sure there are people out there who would smirk at me when they found out I didn't know how to tie a square knot off the top of my hea…

Somehow basic math like addition, mutliplication, fractions, mean, median, and mode, is in no way similar to tying square knots. Especially for future teachers.