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Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

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Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#501

Post by steve1977 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #454
steve1977 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All scientific research on this topic points to the conclusion that standardized test results are the single best predictor of subsequent academic performance. And academic performance is measured how? With standardized tests?

Obviously, yes. This is not circular: it is by no means tautological that people who did well on test X will do well on a completely different test Y that tests different knowledge and skills. The fact fact that it does gives strong evidence to the value of using these tests for admission.

It depends on what skills are necessary to succeed at test X and Y. While the subject matter or details thereof might differ, it's possible that things like "knowing how to learn to the test (i.e. cramming)" or "reading between the lines of what the teacher/professor says is relevant" belongs to these skills. And these can absolutely be transferred between test X and Y.

So the question is, how much do these tests actually test skills in the subject matter and how much do they test "meta skills"?

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#502

Post by Pay08 »

crims0n wrote: post #6

> When education is in-person, attractive students receive higher grades in non-quantitative subjects, in which teachers tend to interact more with students compared to quantitative courses. I wonder how much of this is less about attraction and more about social skills. Granted, higher attraction affords more opportunity to develop those skills, but I have met plenty of charming people who were not conventionally at…

I think being charming is conventionally attractive. The teddy bear stereotype exists for a reason.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#503

Post by Pay08 »

ecshafer wrote: post #211
elevatortrim wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is an expectation that it should not matter, and there is a reality that it does matter, and there is lots of discussion because the expectations and the reality do not match.

Why is there an expectation that it should not matter? Is it just childrens shows? In many countries you have to put a headshot on your resume, that seems very overt that attractiveness / looks does matter. In the west there is a large idealism over practicality sometimes.

Where do you _have_ to put a headshot in a resume?

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#504

Post by jdthedisciple »

jamilton wrote: post #400
Aurornis wrote: post #258

The HN submission title (EDIT: The title is “ Attractive students no longer receive better results as classes moved online ” as I write this, in case it gets updated) isn’t from the paper and isn’t entirely accurate. The paper actually found that male students who scored higher in the beauty ratings continued to get higher grades as well: > On the contrary, for male students, there was still a significant beauty prem…

That seems like a pretty reasonable subdivision to me. Culturally there are differences in what it means to be attractive as a male or female, so it follows that the effects could be different.

> Culturally

Surely you mean biologically

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#506

Post by jdthedisciple »

Jensson wrote: post #484
bombcar wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Male beauty is so powerful it can be transmitted over TCP/IP?

Male beauty is mostly being fit, and being fit leads to better outcomes even without biased teachers. Female beauty doesn't correlate to real world performance in the same way, as women that are a bit thinner than optimal health gets rated as the most beautiful.

Absolutely vital insight, yes. Male beauty is arduously acquired, which necessarily means it correlates with other virtues such as great work ethic, persistence, not quitting easily, etc.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#508

Post by atwrk »

cubefox wrote: post #394
atwrk wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I happen to have a phd in that broader domain. It's not censorship, as you imply, but IQ is just way fuzzier a concept than people outside of this area of research think. The popular view is IQ is an objective thing, exactly measurable and so on (the metaphor of brains being computers, essentially). In reality you can put a 14 year old from a bad environment into an optimal environment and their IQ increases by…

IQ is highly heritable, so I don't think there is any environmental factor that has this big an impact, except in extreme cases like severe malnutrition. Also note that IQ increases with age roughly into early adulthood independently of environment, so the IQ of a 14 year old increasing is a perfectly normal part of the heritable parts of development.

Obviously scientists have thought about that and therefore administer age-adjusted IQ tests for different cohorts, precisely with the aim of IQ staying constant during aging of an individual. And yet here we are.

You really don't need a censorship conspiracy to explain these things. I'd recommend you try to challenge your assumptions about IQ and heritability by downloading a few textbooks about the topics. Many many papers are freely available, and the textbooks are let's say easy to find. You could try textbooks about a more accessible area like developmental psychology as it is more easily accessible and still covers these topics quite well.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#509

Post by zelphirkalt »

buildbot wrote: post #126
olalonde wrote: post #92

I remember in college there were always small groups of students chatting with professors after class or going to office hours. Many profs would drop pretty big hints about upcoming exams. I guess it was a mix of enjoying the attention, pitying weaker students, and wanting to reward "participation". Always felt a bit unfair to me.

Every professor has their own style, most of the ones I had were very open that office hours were a pretty great way to get help/more targeted hints on what to study. This isn’t in my opinion, a problem. Their goal is to educate you as best as possible in theory, via classes, homework, and office hours. Students who take the time and effort to attend office hours clearly want to at least pretend to be putting in extr…

For many profs the goal is to spend as little as possible time with students, so that they can spend more time with their research career, than lectures for students or hours after the lectures. For that they employ students, who have passed the exams. Teaching is merely a necessary annoyance to them.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#510

Post by cubefox »

atwrk wrote: post #508
cubefox wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ is highly heritable, so I don't think there is any environmental factor that has this big an impact, except in extreme cases like severe malnutrition. Also note that IQ increases with age roughly into early adulthood independently of environment, so the IQ of a 14 year old increasing is a perfectly normal part of the heritable parts of development.

Obviously scientists have thought about that and therefore administer age-adjusted IQ tests for different cohorts, precisely with the aim of IQ staying constant during aging of an individual. And yet here we are. You really don't need a censorship conspiracy to explain these things. I'd recommend you try to challenge your assumptions about IQ and heritability by downloading a few textbooks about the topics. Many many…

The problem with the "I'm right, you are wrong, educate yourself" reply is that, because of the taboo, different books will say vastly different things about this topic. So you have to decide which books are the "good" ones and which are the "bad" ones.
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