link round-up

[cellio]

I have some things collecting in tabs, so here's a hodge-podge:

• First, border-crossing. You've probably heard by now that border control in the US has gotten aggressive, including demanding passwords for encrypted devices and then taking them out of view for an extended time. You don't have to give up your password, but if you don't, they can confiscate your device for weeks or months for "review". The rights you have against unreasonable search and seizure in the US are not the same as those you have at the border. While they can't deny entry to US citizens, they can to others.

• It's important to know what you don't know. David Director Friedman has an interesting idea about applying economics to teaching -- specifically, grading exams.

• A lot of the Rands article The New Manager Death-Spiral sounds very familiar.

• We all know one of the Internet rules: don't read the comments. The parts of the net I frequent tend to be better than, say, a random sample of YouTube, which is due to a mix of conscientious participants and comment moderation. A while back I came across a comment-moderation policy described as "Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite": they require a comment to be at least two of true, necessary, and kind.

• I'm not sure that philosophy applies to windshield notes, but they sure are funny.

• How do we know Humpty Dumpty is an egg? The rhyme doesn't say so. Huh, I never thought about that.

• Speaking of things I hadn't thought about, have you ever noticed the similarities between fantasy-adventurer settings and westerns?

Comments

[siderea]

David Director Friedman has an interesting idea about applying economics to teaching -- specifically, grading exams.

Er, that is precisely how the SAT is graded, or was back when I took it in the 1980s. Or rather almost precisely. ET gives 25%. You have to beat one in four odds, as test prep tutors teach everyone minimaxing multiple choice questions.

[cellio]

Oh, is it? It's been so long that I didn't remember. Thanks.

[dsrtao]

Since DDF then assigns letter grades on a curve, it appears the impact of his grading method is in fact non-existent.

If he actually wanted to reduce his grading burden, he would need to provide an incentive. Hopefully by the time they get to a midterm the students will have learned the difference between a real incentive and a marketing spin.

Or, he could see if anybody pays attention to the quality of his grading work and simply assign scores according to prejudice. That would reduce his cost.

[metahacker]

One of my high school's teachers used to grade at 300%, which is to say, if you got it right, you got +1, and if you got it wrong, you got -3. (These were not multiple-choice questions, which he called multiple-guess questions, so guessing wasn't even statistically useful.)

Typical "good" scores in the class were 10-12/100. Answering all the questions was considered either very brave or very stupid. I imagine this also meant less for him to grade.

I'm not sure whether people learned better this way, but I think they did learn a little bit about what they actually knew--which might have been, overall, a more useful skill for his class than AP physics.

[siderea]

:D