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U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

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Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#211

Post by xorvoid »

lqet wrote: post #41

I 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…

We graded similarly, incidentally, when I was at U-of-M (lol). I don’t think we ever sorted by name so I don’t know if we’d have a bias effect by name unless it’s an implicit bias towards lexicographical esthetics. I won’t deny that grading fatigue can have subjective effects. I always thought we did a pretty fair and objective job. I taught Computer Architecture and we we developed answer keys and grading scales before grading a single test. Of course assigning partial credit always ended up being pretty subjective. Typically though people would error in the same ways and so those would be subjectively identical. I never thought names factored into this much but, to be fair, no one ever collected data…

Finally, I guess I’ll admit that I’m probably very biased because my initials as A.B. and I’ve always gotten excellent grades, so… maybe maybe maybe

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#212

Post by [deleted] »

redandblack wrote: post #123

When I studied engineering in India, we never put our names in the finals at college. Every one gets a exam id and that goes in the answer sheets. Also, it is never your professor who grades you - the answer sheets are collected and lecturers/professors will correct them at the state level across all the engineering colleges in my state. I do not know how it is now as there has been an explosion of colleges in the st…

[deleted]

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#213

Post by jedberg »

lelanthran wrote: post #192
jedberg wrote: post #127

This is basically the reason my kids have the last name that they do. My last name starts with E and my wife's with Y. Bucking tradition, she didn't change her name when we got married, so when we had kids we had to decide what name to give them. We opted to hyphenate. Historically, hyphenated last names were [Woman's last name]-[Man's last name]. However, my wife hated that her last name was near the end of the alph…

> Bucking tradition, she didn't change her name when we got married, Unless you were married earlier than the 90s, I wouldn't really call that "bucking tradition" any time from, say, the mid-90s onwards. If you really want to buck tradition, then don't get married - just live together, and have kids :-) (After all, there's nothing more traditional than marriage, is there?)

In the US, 80% of women still take their husband’s last name.

But you hit on an important point — a lot of couples are just skipping marriage now.

We went halfway there — we bought the house together years before we got married.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#214

Post by janci »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #51
princeb wrote: post #16

>“We kind of suspect that fatigue is one of the major factors that is driving this effect, because when you’re working on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose your attention and your cognitive abilities are dropping,” Pei said. there is a similar effect found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect

The thing is, it’s unclear why that effect would make you give people lower grades. surely an equally reasonable guess is that less cognitive abilities could make you give higher grades because you don’t notice errors?

Sometimes you see the result is wrong so you do not give any points initially and then look on the steps and try to find something that looks correct to give at least some points. The willingness to track through every step diminishes with increasing fatigue.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#215

Post by arp242 »

zdw wrote: post #15

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.

When I was a kid marbles were the big thing, and if you were playing with them in class the teacher would put it in a big glass jar. When it was full he would call out the kids and each would get a handful.

I was last in the alphabet; this was already an issue with books we had to read; you could choose which book to read, but it was always in alphabetical order. When it was my turn there were just a few left, and certainly all the popular high-demand ones were gone.

Anyway, when it finally was my turn to get my marbles he was all out. When I asked "where's my marbles?" he just shrugged and said "all out". I must've been about 7. Lots of crying ensued and I think I got some marbles from other kids, but it wasn't about the marbles – not really.

I still don't understand how anyone can expect any different result...

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#216

Post by [deleted] »

libria wrote: post #195
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #42

Earlier 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?

Probably every single health or wellness "Find a Provider" portal lists them A-Z. That's a multi-billion dollar industry. If I was Dr. Zachary Zane, I'd change my name.

[deleted]

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#217

Post by retrac »

Electoral ballots have often listed the candidates in alphabetic order, but some studies have suggested that it gives a small benefit, to the first person listed. [1] Many election authorities, in Canada at least, have shifted to randomizing the order in some way [2]. Some people have even played with alphabetic sort for novelty purposes; a man in Ontario changed his legal name to "Above Znoneofthe" so he would appear last on the ballot as "Znoneofthe, Above".

[1] https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/ballot-order-effects

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-do...

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#218

Post by underlipton »

zdw wrote: post #15

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.

This seems like a good example (free of cultural baggage) of how people with privilege often don't notice that they're receiving that privilege. What seemed normal and fair to your friend turned out to be an advantage that they didn't even consider.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#219

Post by DangitBobby »

godelski wrote: post #188
sdwr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you mean clichés.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#220

Post by zeroonetwothree »

retrac wrote: post #217

Electoral ballots have often listed the candidates in alphabetic order, but some studies have suggested that it gives a small benefit, to the first person listed. [1] Many election authorities, in Canada at least, have shifted to randomizing the order in some way [2]. Some people have even played with alphabetic sort for novelty purposes; a man in Ontario changed his legal name to "Above Znoneofthe" so he would appea…

In the US it’s usually randomised as well
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