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Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

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Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#261

Post by anm89 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #180
anm89 wrote: post #35

To me this brings up the absurdity of having essays on standardized tests. What about an essay is standardized? It's a totally nonsensical premise. This always gets made into some kind of techluminati conspiracy for the machines to ingrain structural racism whereas it's pretty clear all the algorithms fail to do is improve an already bad situation stemming from a flawed premise.

A number of states found out their schools were graduating students who genuinely could not read or write effectively. If you want to quantify that, you're forced to test it somehow. How would you test writing ability without asking them to write something?

Reading comprehension with simple factual questions.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#262

Post by gibolt »

kazinator wrote: post #53
Spivak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to see how the general opinion of CS people has completely shifted in the last few years from "algorithmic scoring is important in removing the bias from human graders" to the exact opposite.

If we can quantify the bias in the machine, that gives us an opportunity to close the feedback loop and control the bias. The bias comes from the human-generated training data in the first place; the machine isn't introducing its own. For instance, the machine has no inherent concept of disparaging someone's language because it's from an identifiable inner city dialect. If it picks up that bias, at least it will appl…

If...

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#263

Post by Balgair »

piokoch wrote: post #181
dahart wrote: post #133

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said. Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is b…

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc? Who t…

> My guess is that soon or later people will learn how to game that AI.

To be fair, the GP here is specifically describing that he gamed the AI via a copy-paste of a critique of the AI, his kid submitted it on their own accord, it was graded without comment, and then when the GP went into comment on the gaming of the AI, the teacher not only did not care that the AI was gamed, but expressed gratitude for the AI saving hours of work, still ignoring that the AI fundamentally made things worse, all at the expense of the entire point of being a teacher in the first place.

The issue, for the teacher, is that in 'the system' in which they collect a pay-check, the AI works flawlessly. The point, for the teacher, is not to educate children. It is to have assignments that children pass with some sort of distribution that can be sent in and calculated by some person in a beige suit, wide tie, and hair troubles. The difference is subtle at first, but when you get further along to the point where the GP is sitting, then the difference is comical.

The AI allows the teacher to increase their effiency in processing assignments, ones that never really mattered to the teacher in the first place. In valley-speak: the incentives are not aligned.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#264

Post by crankylinuxuser »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #252
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The let me posit another idea... There's 2 ways of finding out these artifacts of AI essay grading: pure luck, and being able to afford extensive test-prep (rich). The luck one can't be accounted for. So I im lead to believe that the purpose of these essays and their AI grading is to find and escalate rich people.

> So I im lead to believe that the purpose of these essays and their AI grading is to find and escalate rich people. Well, of course. How many poor people are allowed to decide what is good for children's education?

The standard US response is:

'There's a reason why they're poor. Better pull themselves up by the bootstraps."

Mixed alongside with poverty stricken neighborhoods are the primary funding, resulting in poor school systems. And those students obviously wont have the money or the access to get the test-prep needed to "succeed".

It's all too laid out to be accidental.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#265

Post by garmaine »

ineedasername wrote: post #99
garmaine wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These would not be school contractors.

Why not? The school contracts with the testing agency that does the grading. Seems like a contractor relationship?

School contractor is someone who is hired by the school district on via a contractual relationship. Think temporary teachers, or custodian staff. It’s not a transitive relationship to every employee of every company who has some sort of contract, however small, with a school.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#266

Post by bradstewart »

yoz-y wrote: post #195
dahart wrote: post #133

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said. Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is b…

> Turns out the instructions said the essay would be scored on verbal efficiency; getting the point across clearly with the fewest words. I started playing around and realized that the more words I added, the higher the score, whether they were relevant or grammatical or not. Frankly, this does not change anything from my experience in school decades ago. The teachers always said that the length does not matter and w…

Is it possible that the students who wrote shorter papers were in fact presenting incomplete arguments and/or thoughts? Writing clearly and concisely is extremely difficult.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#267

Post by Nasrudith »

piokoch wrote: post #181
dahart wrote: post #133

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said. Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is b…

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc? Who t…

It is classic beancounter thinking in the worst way, the worst stereotype of a MBA trying to minimize cost beyond all reason cutting corners. Even when it saws at the branch they sit upon.

It is frankly a sign of a diseased culture to use it in any capacity except an exercise to improve AI.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#268

Post by crankylinuxuser »

black6 wrote: post #250
dvdbloc wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is just my experience but I can confirm the automated math scoring system I was using in a large US university in 2012 had bugs where many times I would enter a complex solution with fractions and it would tell me I was wrong and the correct response was some other form of the same equivalent fraction... Talk about frustrating after pouring over a question for 10 minutes.

I remember to this day when I went round and round with a calculus teacher in high school who told me "sin(x) + 2" was incorrect. Then answer she wanted was "2 + sin(x)". I argued that addition was commutative, "2 + 3 = 3 + 2" and so forth. She wouldn't budge. She also said it was impossible to calculate the exact area under a curve, because you can't draw an infinite number of boxes under the curve. Having an ignora…

My gods, that is stupid.

Math is only not commutative in very rare areas. A specific area is concatenation of 2 strings, or 2 rotations of a rubiks cube.

> said it was impossible to calculate the exact area under a curve

And this is why a lot of people are against unions and similar protections for teachers. How do you get rid of someone who blatantly lies and informs falsely to students? How do you get rid of horrible teachers?

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#269

Post by crankylinuxuser »

jcranberry wrote: post #254
Aromasin wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been forced to use an online math software for all my homework while at school, I vehemently disagree. It was so poor that it became a meme within my year group. It would mark you as incorrect for using too many decimal places, even though it wouldn't tell you how many significant figures was required. I often remember it marking my answer as incorrect, even though it was identical to the answer they gave. Som…

That's just poor software. As long as the software and teachers or professors allow for going over answers and checking for correctness it should be alright.

That sounds like "My Math Lab" by Pearson. It is horrible like everyone talking in here states.

It's also a bundle with the book sold by unis, because the code 'allows' you to submit homework required for the class. So they're doing both resale prevention, AND horrible grading.

People I know who have to interact with it call it "My Meth Lab" - because you have to be high to like it.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#270

Post by Nasrudith »

fzeroracer wrote: post #109
lopmotr wrote: post #90

I wish this machine bias wasn't always presented in such divisive terms as race and "disadvantaged groups". It can affect anybody. If you happened to develop a writing style that looks like typical bad essay writers' style, then you could be hurt by bias in the grading.

If an image processing algorithm fails to recognize black people or worse, profiles them, how else should this be described but in terms of race? If you don't talk about the actual problem, how can you possibly expect to solve it?

In terms of the technical effect that causes it as opposed to sociological.

The point then isn't that the algorithm hates black people or the programmers are racist (even if they were they would likely find it hard to train it to specifically exclude accurately without major side effects), but that their training set or analysis is flawed - potentially even if it is representative. Even if the results are problematic trying to address hate which isn't there won't be helpful. Call for better vetting procedures instead or that it clearly isn't ready for the proposed application.

Say it gets the highest accuracy on a set of photos of non-people images and a set of people which represents the exact ethnic make up all tagged just as "has people" or "doesn't have people". Going with something biased towards the most populous groups would get the best results quickest.

Talking about say image tagging to ensure automated performance checking across various characteristics could be productive on the other hand.

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