True, but those who know what "median" means probably also know what a "quartile" means, so if I used "median" it would've made my comment less of an "obvious, duh!" thing and spoil the unstated point I'm making as well as the joke.
Best leave the mathematical incorrectness there to preserve the feeling of obviousness.
Everyone should be in the top! Everyone should have unlimited resources from disabled addicts to military bioweapons developers - it should be a flat line, a plateau!
Bioweapon developers should be shot in the street. Disabled addicts should be provided the proper help they need; and the education should be changed so there are less disabled addicts and bioweapon developers alike.
I was skeptical of these numbers until I did the research. It's even worse than I thought. Did you know that only 20% of students test in the top quintile? Is our children learning?
One could construct tests where this isn't a given. Create an exam with one really easy question and one really hard question. You'll end up with a huge spike in the center and two tiny tails. The top quintile of correct answers (<=1.6 correct answers) will be vanishingly small.
My state'a standardized test says kids are "at risk" if they aren't in the top 40% of the test. The top 50% could all be traditional "a-b" students. But because they weren't in the top 80% of a-b students they are at risk for failing academically.... It's so asinine and disheartening. The last half of the year is devoted to this idiotic test. Kids could be learning stuff that will enrich themselves... Instead they are learnig how to take a test better.
I can almost see a facebook post along the lines of: One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to understand how terrible things are, when fully 25% of the population are in the bottom quartile.
I think their point is that you could have people in the bottom quartile who learned what they are expected to, are capable, but are failed anyway because of how they compare to others.
(Assuming curved tests really work like that, never bothered reading the pretty long grading policies)
As Nougat said, this has nothing to do with passing or failing and is just a consequence of measuring performance. If 100 people take a test and the lowest 25 scorers all have a 95 out of 100 points then they are still in the bottom quartile regardless of the fact that every single student passed with flying colors.
Showing a bell curve with no context means nothing.
I’ve been graded on a curve, and I’ve done it myself a couple of times. IMO, it’s usually a sign of a bad class (too much material being crammed in) or a bad teacher (didn’t get the concepts across to the majority of the students).
That said, it’s usually done when it’s needed to prevent a significant portion of the class from failing. I remember a chem exam I took where a 16/100 was a C.
The basic idea is that grades are normally distributed (ie a bell curve) which allows you to find the average grade range and shift the letter grade (eg a C or C+). There’s some professors who take the idea too far and rather than working off of an actual normal distribution try to fit the procedure to a simply skewed distribution or use it to pull down an 85/100 to a C, but in my experience that’s the exception to the rule, especially in math/science courses.
I agree. My calc I professor would just silently scribble equations on the board, then turn around, gesture wildly, and shout "You see".
I remember right before the drop date, I had a 34 in the class, and he took time out of class to beg us to study because if too many people failed, he might have consequences.
The only grade left was the final. I did much worse on it than the rest of the course, but my course grade shot up to the low 70s. Sure enough, I had the like 4th highest grade in the class.