Timeline for Assessing students in exams with negative points?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
28 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 31, 2021 at 10:45 | comment | added | Tripartio | Concerning Germany, specifically, it is forbidden in North Rhine-Westphalia: pflichtlektuere.com/16/05/2012/… | |
| Nov 8, 2014 at 8:55 | comment | added | reirab | @Izkata It is done. I remember it in the math competitions I competed in when I was in high school. One of them, for instance, was graded out of 200 possible points. There were 40 multiple-choice questions with 5 options each. You started out with 40 points and got +4 for a correct answer and -1 for an incorrect answer. This meant that blind guessing would average out to no effect while educated guessing was still more likely to be in your favor. The American Mathematic Competition follows a similar scheme with +6 for correct, +1.5 for no answer and 0 for incorrect. | |
| Nov 7, 2014 at 18:47 | history | edited | 0 kelvin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited title
|
| Nov 7, 2014 at 17:55 | history | edited | D.W. | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Remove rant-y, judgemental comments. If the purpose is to understand why, then these kinds of comments do not contribute to understanding why.
|
| Nov 7, 2014 at 16:17 | comment | added | Izkata | @cpast Definitely regional/per-competition, if it is done; WYSE had no penalty for incorrect guesses when I was in it | |
| Nov 7, 2014 at 13:02 | comment | added | Raphael | @gnometorule What you say about case law is correct (afaik) but strong precedence (meaning you are likely to lose in court) is equivalent to something being illegal in practice, unless you are prepared to fight. (Which universities usually don't seem to be, both regarding willingness and competence.) | |
| Nov 7, 2014 at 7:14 | comment | added | jwenting | and who's to say the negative points eventually lead to a negative grade? I've had teachers do that, they just stopped correcting on reaching the number of negative points needed to reach a 0 (or 1, school I went to never graded below 1-, different scale, same principle). | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 17:42 | comment | added | cpast | @SteveJessop IIRC, that exact approach is used for some American high school math contests. | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 17:21 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | Note that you could avoid negative grading on multiple choice by awarding for example 2 points for a correct answer, 1 for no answer, and 0 for an incorrect answer. Not sure whether or not this would outwit those German judges, though ;-) Their objection to "taking away points" may or may not also cause them to object to "awarding points for doing nothing". | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 16:31 | comment | added | gerrit | My aunt once scored -7 on a scale from 1 to 10. It was a secondary school vocabulary test and the teacher simply subtracted one point for each wrong answer. This was in the 1960s; I think it is now illegal. | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 15:57 | comment | added | gnometorule | @DavidRicherby: Germany doesn't have case law - I forgot what its type of law is called: one ruling doesn't set necessarily enforceable law for other cases. Also, being German, as a kid I remember our biology high school teacher (also a monk) once giving an F+F for an exam where "one fail wouldn't have done justice to this level of incompetence" (which I'd call the extreme level of negative points; albeit at high school level). And he was everyone's favorite teacher. | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 14:51 | comment | added | dotancohen |
At my university a student got a negative grade due to wrongly answering too many multiple-choice questions. Then a "root factor" was applied to everybody's grade, i.e. newGrade = sqrt(grade) + grade. This student therefore had the dubious honour of being the first student in university history to receive a complex number as his final grade.
|
|
| Nov 6, 2014 at 13:55 | comment | added | Raphael | @cbeleites Yes, certainly. Many such grading schemes can be transformed into their positive dual, though: award points for correct/present things and sum up (as opposed to penalising for wrong/missing things). | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 13:41 | comment | added | cbeleites | @Raphael: but it is perfectly OK (and frequently done) in Germany to subtract points for certain types of error within a question (wrong sign, parenthesis error, missing axis units, wrong/missing unit, etc). | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 13:04 | comment | added | David Richerby | @Raphael Ah, I'd forgotten case-law. | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 12:56 | comment | added | Raphael | @DavidRicherby I don't know if there's actual law/regulation, but there are court rulings to that effect (prompted by students suing after failing an exam). Basically, it was ruled that you may not "take away" points earned on one problem by assigning negative points to another. Hence, points on problems/questions have to be non-negative. | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 12:28 | comment | added | David Richerby | @Raphael Really? Doesn't the government have better things to do with its time than making laws about how people mark multiple-choice exams? | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 10:06 | comment | added | Raphael | In Germany, this is illegal. (iirc) Note also that you only have this problem (caused by guessing being a valid strategy for exams) if you pose uninspired MC exams. Better exams don't have this issue. | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 8:41 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackAcademia/status/530278819077177344 | ||
| Nov 6, 2014 at 8:18 | answer | added | print x div 0 | timeline score: 6 | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 3:53 | answer | added | Ypnypn | timeline score: 20 | |
| Nov 6, 2014 at 2:38 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | I'm afraid I have to give +1 for the user name in confluence with the question. | |
| Nov 5, 2014 at 23:33 | answer | added | Anonymous Mathematician | timeline score: 61 | |
| Nov 5, 2014 at 23:18 | comment | added | ff524 | Related: Is it dishonest to guess on multiple choice exams? | |
| Nov 5, 2014 at 23:04 | answer | added | WetlabStudent | timeline score: 8 | |
| Nov 5, 2014 at 22:26 | answer | added | GeneMachine | timeline score: 19 | |
| Nov 5, 2014 at 21:37 | comment | added | user2813274 | Some standardized tests use negative points to prevent guessing on multiple choice problems. Other times stuff it "required" but not given any points (pre-lab work for example). Ultimately it's up to the teacher, and they can assign any grade they want - but it's generally better to be consistent (i.e. a wrong negative sign is always -.5 pts, etc.), as that makes it easier for students to understand and creates less back and forth discussions over the grades. | |
| Nov 5, 2014 at 21:30 | history | asked | 0 kelvin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |