andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-94 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I received a bunch of interesting comments on my blog on adjusting SAT scores. Below I have a long comment from a colleague with experience in the field. But first, this hilarious (from a statistical perspective) story from Howard Wainer: Some years ago when we were visiting Harvard [as a parent of a potential student, not in Howard's role as educational researcher], an admissions director said two things of relevance (i) the SAT hasn’t got enough ‘top’ for Harvard — it doesn’t discriminate well enough at the high end. To prove this she said (ii) that Harvard had more than 1500 ‘perfect 1600s’ apply. Some were rejected. I mentioned that there were only about 750 1600s from HS seniors in the US — about 400 had 1600 in their junior year (and obviously didn’t retake) and about 350 from their senior year. So, I concluded, she must be mistaken. Then I found out that they allowed applicants to pick and choose their highest SAT-V score and their highest SAT-M score from separate adm
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1 I received a bunch of interesting comments on my blog on adjusting SAT scores. [sent-1, score-0.147]
2 Below I have a long comment from a colleague with experience in the field. [sent-2, score-0.216]
3 I mentioned that there were only about 750 1600s from HS seniors in the US — about 400 had 1600 in their junior year (and obviously didn’t retake) and about 350 from their senior year. [sent-6, score-0.09]
4 Then I found out that they allowed applicants to pick and choose their highest SAT-V score and their highest SAT-M score from separate administrations, and so constructed their 1500. [sent-8, score-0.709]
5 I stopped talking at that point, deciding against discussing the probability of throwing snake eyes if you cold throw dice many times and pick out a one from one toss and the other one from another. [sent-9, score-0.43]
6 My other colleague sent in the following thoughts: 1. [sent-10, score-0.216]
7 I [my colleague who has worked in this area] thought that the result of the coaching studies was that they did not show significant improvement when the control was serious self-study (e. [sent-11, score-0.468]
8 , going through ’10 Real SATs,’ a relatively inexpensive publication available from the College Board. [sent-13, score-0.208]
9 I can’t put my fingers on exact studies, so I could be quoting myth or misquoting the actual work. [sent-15, score-0.265]
10 The approach I [my colleague] has always favored is to set the cut point for the test scores (SAT, GRE) relatively low (although not so low that you are admitting people who are unprepared); big enough that you get half again as many applicants as you have vacancies. [sent-17, score-1.014]
11 Then look at other factors in statements and background to create the incoming class. [sent-18, score-0.084]
12 One of the roles that the SAT plays is in helping to “equate” the high school grades which reflect local grading practices. [sent-22, score-0.181]
13 According to the famous 8-schools study (reproduced in chapter 5 of BDA), the effect of coaching is less than 10 points. [sent-24, score-0.347]
14 And, indeed, I’ve heard that the effect of coaching is about the same as the effect of spending X hours studying the material. [sent-26, score-0.442]
15 Setting too high a cut point on GRE can rule out some potentially excellent applicants. [sent-30, score-0.35]
16 That’s why I suggested adjusting the SAT rather than abandoning it. [sent-33, score-0.24]
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Introduction: I received a bunch of interesting comments on my blog on adjusting SAT scores. Below I have a long comment from a colleague with experience in the field. But first, this hilarious (from a statistical perspective) story from Howard Wainer: Some years ago when we were visiting Harvard [as a parent of a potential student, not in Howard's role as educational researcher], an admissions director said two things of relevance (i) the SAT hasn’t got enough ‘top’ for Harvard — it doesn’t discriminate well enough at the high end. To prove this she said (ii) that Harvard had more than 1500 ‘perfect 1600s’ apply. Some were rejected. I mentioned that there were only about 750 1600s from HS seniors in the US — about 400 had 1600 in their junior year (and obviously didn’t retake) and about 350 from their senior year. So, I concluded, she must be mistaken. Then I found out that they allowed applicants to pick and choose their highest SAT-V score and their highest SAT-M score from separate adm
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Introduction: After reading the Rewarding Strivers book , I had some thoughts about how to make the college admissions system more fair to students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. Instead of boosting up the disadvantaged students, why not pull down the advantaged students? Here’s the idea. Disadvantaged students are defined typically not by a bad thing that they have, but rather by good things that they don’t have: financial resources, a high-quality education, and so forth. In contrast, advantaged students get all sorts of freebies. So here are my suggestions: 1. All high school grades on a 4-point scale (A=4, B=3, etc). No more of this 5-points-for-an-A-in-an-AP course, which gives the ridiculous outcomes of kids graduating with a 4.3 average, not so fair to kids in schools that don’t offer a lot of AP classes. 2. Subtract points for taking the SAT multiple times. A simple rule would be: You can use your highest SAT score, but you lose 50 points for every other time
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Introduction: Several years ago, I heard about a project at the Educational Testing Service to identify “strivers”: students from disadvantaged backgrounds who did unexpectedly well on the SAT (the college admissions exam formerly known as the “Scholastic Aptitude Test” but apparently now just “the SAT,” in the same way that Exxon is just “Exxon” and that Harry Truman’s middle name is just “S”), at least 200 points above a predicted score based on demographic and neighborhood information. My ETS colleague and I agreed that this was a silly idea: From a statistical point of view, if student A is expected ahead of time to do better than student B, and then they get identical test scores, then you’d expect student A (the non-”striver”) to do better than student B (the “striver”) later on. Just basic statistics: if a student does much better than expected, then probably some of that improvement is noise. The idea of identifying these “strivers” seemed misguided and not the best use of the SAT.
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Introduction: Timothy Noah reports : At the end of 2007, Harvard announced that it would limit tuition to no more than 10 percent of family income for families earning up to $180,000. (It also eliminated all loans, following a trail blazed by Princeton, and stopped including home equity in its calculations of family wealth.) Yale saw and raised to $200,000, and other wealthy colleges weighed in with variations. Noah argues that this is a bad thing because it encourages other colleges to give tuition breaks to families with six-figure incomes, thus sucking up money that could otherwise go to reduce tuition for lower-income students. For example: Roger Lehecka, a former dean of students at Columbia, and Andrew Delbanco, director of American studies there, wrote in the New York Times that Harvard’s initiative was “good news for students at Harvard or Yale” but “bad news” for everyone else. “The problem,” they explained, “is that most colleges will feel compelled to follow Harvard and Yale’s
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Introduction: I received a bunch of interesting comments on my blog on adjusting SAT scores. Below I have a long comment from a colleague with experience in the field. But first, this hilarious (from a statistical perspective) story from Howard Wainer: Some years ago when we were visiting Harvard [as a parent of a potential student, not in Howard's role as educational researcher], an admissions director said two things of relevance (i) the SAT hasn’t got enough ‘top’ for Harvard — it doesn’t discriminate well enough at the high end. To prove this she said (ii) that Harvard had more than 1500 ‘perfect 1600s’ apply. Some were rejected. I mentioned that there were only about 750 1600s from HS seniors in the US — about 400 had 1600 in their junior year (and obviously didn’t retake) and about 350 from their senior year. So, I concluded, she must be mistaken. Then I found out that they allowed applicants to pick and choose their highest SAT-V score and their highest SAT-M score from separate adm
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Introduction: After reading the Rewarding Strivers book , I had some thoughts about how to make the college admissions system more fair to students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. Instead of boosting up the disadvantaged students, why not pull down the advantaged students? Here’s the idea. Disadvantaged students are defined typically not by a bad thing that they have, but rather by good things that they don’t have: financial resources, a high-quality education, and so forth. In contrast, advantaged students get all sorts of freebies. So here are my suggestions: 1. All high school grades on a 4-point scale (A=4, B=3, etc). No more of this 5-points-for-an-A-in-an-AP course, which gives the ridiculous outcomes of kids graduating with a 4.3 average, not so fair to kids in schools that don’t offer a lot of AP classes. 2. Subtract points for taking the SAT multiple times. A simple rule would be: You can use your highest SAT score, but you lose 50 points for every other time
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Introduction: Theodore Vasiloudis writes: I came upon this article by Laura Hamilton, an assistant professor in the University of California at Merced, that claims that “The more money that parents provide for higher education, the lower the grades their children earn.” I can’t help but feel that there something wrong with the basis of the study or a confounding factor causing this apparent correlation, and since you often comment on studies on your blog I thought you might find this study interesting. My reply: I have to admit that the description above made me suspicious of the study before I even looked at it. On first thought, I’d expect the effect of parent’s financial contributions to be positive (as they free the student from the need to get a job during college), but not negative. Hamilton argues that “parental investments create a disincentive for student achievement,” which may be—but I’m generally suspicious of arguments in which the rebound is bigger than the main effect.
Introduction: Howard Wainer writes : When we focus only on the differences between groups, we too easily lose track of the big picture. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the current public discussions of the size of the gap in test scores that is observed between racial groups. It has been noted that in New Jersey the gap between the average scores of white and black students on the well-developed scale of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has shrunk by only about 25 percent over the past two decades. The conclusion drawn was that even though the change is in the right direction, it is far too slow. But focusing on the difference blinds us to what has been a remarkable success in education over the past 20 years. Although the direction and size of student improvements are considered across many subject areas and many age groups, I will describe just one — 4th grade mathematics. . . . there have been steep gains for both racial groups over this period (somewhat steeper g
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Introduction: Someone who works in statistics in the pharmaceutical industry (but prefers to remain anonymous) sent me this update to our discussion on the differences between approvals of drugs and medical devices: The ‘substantial equivalence’ threshold is a very outdated. Basically the FDA has to follow federal law and the law is antiquated and leads to two extraordinarily different paths for device approval. You could have a very simple but first-in-kind device with an easy to understand physiological mechanism of action (e.g. the FDA approved a simple tiny stent that would relieve pressure from a glaucoma patient’s eye this summer). This device would require a standard (likely controlled) trial at the one-sided 0.025 level. Even after the trial it would likely go to a panel where outside experts (e.g.practicing & academic MDs and statisticians) hear evidence from the company and FDA and vote on its safety and efficacy. FDA would then rule, consider the panel’s vote, on whether to appro
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