Cheaters Exposed Analyzing Statistical Anomalies 437
Hugh Pickens writes "Proctors and teachers can't watch everyone while they take tests — not when some students can text with their phones in their pockets, so with tests increasingly important in education — used to determine graduation, graduate school admission, and — the latest — merit pay and tenure for teachers, Trip Gabriel writes that schools are turning to 'data forensics' to catch cheaters, searching for data anomalies where the chances of random agreement are astronomical. In addition to looking for copying, statisticians hunt for illogical patterns, like test-takers who did better on harder questions than easy ones, a sign of advance knowledge of part of a test or look for unusually large score gains from a previous test by a student or class. Since Caveon Test Security, whose clients have included the College Board, the Law School Admission Council, and more than a dozen states and big city school districts, began working for the state of Mississippi in 2006, cheating has declined about 70 percent, says James Mason, director of the State Department of Education's Office of Student Assessment. 'People know that if you cheat there is an extremely high chance you're going to get caught,' says Mason."
Re:This doesn't prove anything (Score:4, Funny)
A chance of about one in a million means that if you have one million pupils usually one will be flaged without any reason.
Luckily no single school has either over a million pupils or a deep understanding of statistics so we're safe ;)
Re:This doesn't prove anything (Score:4, Funny)
At my university is was common for seniors to come to the room where the first freshman physics (or some other hard subject) test we being administered, sit as if taking the test, then get up, turn in a blank test book, and leave after 10 minutes - just to fuck with the freshmen. Ahh, college life.