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."
Headline misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
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Depends,
If they did poorly on the previous "Analyzing Statistical Anomalies" test...
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The headline should be "Cheaters Exposed By Analyzing Statistical Anomalies"? I thought the cheaters themselves were doing the analyzing, to get ahead of the cheat detection.
I thought a new branch of Statictical Anomaly Analysis had managed to replicate the effect of airport porn-o-matics.
Re:Headline misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. Some portion of students will cheat as long as (in theory):
[benefit of higher grade] - [cost of honestly achieving higher grade] > {[benefit of cheating] - [cost of cheating]} * [ risk of getting caught cheating] * [value of punishment for cheating].
The real problem is that people are lazy and want to get the best return for the smallest investment. This cannot be fixed, it is human nature.
So we tip the equation in favor of not cheating, by either/and
1. Making the punishment so extreme (expulsion) that even if the risk of getting caught is low, cheating is not a good idea. The problem with this approach is that as the risks of getting caught decrease, people dismiss the risk as zero. This is a known problem with how humans interpret probability and risk dealing with VLNs and VSNs.
2. Increasing the chance of being caught. This is a problem because of the costs involved, as well as an "arms race" between proctors and students.
Note that the equation is also affected by the fact that cheating has become easier, and thus cheaper. There is also a factor for personal inhibitions against cheating, but I'm not sure how to fit it into the model.
PS. sorry for the messy formula.
Re:Headline misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem is that people are lazy and want to get the best return for the smallest investment.
One man's laziness is another man's efficiency. Take morality and ethics out of the equation and the two are virtually synonymous.
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But, given that your goal as an educator is to ensure that your students who graduate are well-educated, then it is a problem.
The students who cheat get the diploma, but not the education.
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The problem is that the diploma is really what is valuable, not the education. If the grad really had to know their stuff for the job they're going to be doing, cheating would be rare since it would greatly affect their continued employability. But, many jobs just require a diploma as a check box for the HR people to check off for the "required qualifications" and don't really require the education. Students know they won't need the education and thus put little work into it, since the only real consequence
Re:Headline misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a scenario, it's a model. Any real-world scenario will fit into that model... and if not, the model, like any other, can be adjusted.
Well, no shit. That's why there is a factor for risk of getting caught.
Are you sure about that? Do you really believe that deterrent punishments have no effect on the likelihood of people to break the rules? Deterrent punishments work, to a certain extent. This is why people who believe they are anonymous or hidden will break rules they'd never break if they thought they'd be held accountable. If the punishment is severe, it may be resented, but it acts a deterrent. Whether the deterrence effect is significant enough to overcome the benefits of the behavior depends on the actual scenario.
The rest of your post also fits into my model. That online exam? Perfect example... easy to cheat, not likely to get caught... thus, people will cheat as it is less costly than actually doing the work required to honestly get a good grade.
Exactly. If your goal is to reduce cheating, you need to consider the factors that make cheating worthwhile to students... which is described by the equation I wrote out.
I think we're basically stating the same thing... but approaching it from different angles.
The main place where I think we differ is that you seem to assign the cause of cheating to the class environment. I assign it to the student, but the decision each student makes is influenced by many factors: their perceived reward from cheating, the punishment for getting caught, the risk of getting caught, etc.
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This does not apply to cheating in the same manner, as cheating on mo
This doesn't prove anything (Score:4, Insightful)
If I fall into the anomaly category without cheating, I'll be screwed. What can I demonstrate in my defense? Not much. I find it hard to believe they can prove that you cheated without actually video-taping you cheating or something along those lines.
Anomalies are what they are, data anomalies, nothing more and nothing less.
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It'd be possible to do in a sensible manner. If half the class falls in the "statistical abnormality" category, and they have the same or similar abnormality, there are some pretty good conclusions you can draw. The same for someone who consistently shows the same abnormality across multiple tests.
The response might not be to fail someone immediately, either. It might be to watch them more closely on future tests, or to swap out the suspected compromised test at the last minute without anyone but the profes
Re:This doesn't prove anything (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sane and rational world, yes. In a school? The instant the business flags someone the school is going to treat that as the voice of god himself coming down from the heavens to demand blood and expulsion.
That's not even getting into the blindingly obvious conflict of interest here. Just like turnitin these guys are a business that relies on there always being cheaters to catch, it's in their interest to produce as many "catches" as possible without losing credibility. Hell at least with turnitin you're dealing with something you can prove, with these guys the student literally has no defense.
It's a witch hunt, pure and simple. If they're not failing they must be cheating somehow, if they are failing obviously they're innocent. No matter what the student is fucked.
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That's not even getting into the blindingly obvious conflict of interest here. Just like turnitin these guys are a business that relies on there always being cheaters to catch, it's in their interest to produce as many "catches" as possible without losing credibility.
I know this is /., but did you RTFA? The company that does the statistical analysis was actually criticized by a school district because they said the statistical anomalies suggested that 33 schools they tested did NOT show evidence of cheating. I won't say that what you suggest isn't possible, but the guy who runs the company profiled in the article appears to be an academic type who is less concerned with profit than with studying the data.
Re:This doesn't prove anything (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the anomalies in and of themselves do not prove anything hence why the article says:
When the anomalies are highly unlikely -- their random occurrence, for example, is greater than one in one million -- Caveon flags the tests for further investigation by school administrators.
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.
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He said essay questions, not essays. A.K.A. “short response”. They’re meant to grade comprehension of the material, not English writing skills.
Re:This doesn't prove anything (Score:5, Insightful)
If I fall into the anomaly category without cheating, I'll be screwed. What can I demonstrate in my defense? Not much.
But this is good. Kids should learn that in the real world they'll be arbitrarily punished for doing well merely to further the career of the person they're working for.
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Once, before an Elementary School exam, a friend of mine said
"If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying"
He then went on to get 98% on that exam. I have always wondered to this day how much of that grade he earned.
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Worse than that, actually. The methodology assumes that one wrong multiple-guess answer is as likely as any other wrong multiple-guess answer. But that isn't the case. Wrong answers are often chosen specifically because a particular and expected form of mistake will yield that answer. This skews the results to a point where the real chance of two people in a class getting exactly the same wrong answers could be as little as 1 in 100... and when you give test after test, it doesn't take long for 1 in 100 odd
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This to the Nth power.
It also fails to take into account a student's study patterns and general aptitudes.
As such "harder" and "easier" questions are a matter of perspective.
Again, lies,
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Anomalies are what they are, data anomalies, nothing more and nothing less.
Not true, anomalies are 100% certain proof of whatever it is you've decided ahead of time that you're looking for. Just ask: 9/11 Truthers, Anti-Obama Birthers, Ghost hunters, Anti-evolutionists, anti-vaccinationists, etc etc etc.
People doing statistical analysis who don't understand that a standard distribution GUARANTEES a percentage of anomalous results, frankly don't have any business having a job in their field. The fact that they'll label people as cheaters when they should know that x% will be
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I agree, the statistics can show cheating, but they can also show a cheater who in reality isn't.
What if several students get the same "wrong" answer. Does it indicate cheating, or does it indicate that the material was taught wrong, so they all gave the same wrong answer.
If done properly, they won't use a single data point (one question) to determine cheating. When I was in school, I didn't cheat on tests. No need. I really didn't care. :) There were plenty
Re:This doesn't prove anything (Score:5, Interesting)
I did this type of work back when I was in college (the 1980's), let me share a bit about the process, or at least how we did it. What we did was count up the matching incorrect answers between people. For most people who entered in a number of incorrect answers, the same wrong answer count tended to be low. For those who were copying answers, the matching wrong count was high. However, this by itself was not sufficient to accuse someone of cheating. What we did was give the names to the exam proctors, who during the next exam would either ensure that these people where physically seperated, or who to keep an eye on. Note this was in the 80's, before the common availability of wireless communication. But who to keep an eye on would still work.
Some observations from the work we did. One: if your going to cheat, cheat off a smart person (duh!). With fewer wrong answers, you blend more into the crowed. Second: this technique would false positive on people who study together. That's why we never used it to accuse someone, but only who to seperate or keep an eye on. In addition, it would give no clue of who was cheating from whom. Three: to counteract this, some professors would give out several slightly different versions of exams. It would be very hard explaining how you got all the right answers for an exam you did not take, but all wrong for the one you did take.
Re:This doesn't prove anything (Score:4, Informative)
Yet according to Caveon Test Security, I'd be a cheater.
According to the article, according to Caveon Test Security, you might be a cheater.
So you'd be investigated. And you'd pass investigation, because you didn't cheat.
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So you'd be investigated. And you'd pass investigation, because you didn't cheat.
No, that is false. There are innocent that get convicted in a criminal court, that have more rigorous procedure than an academic tribunal. So you would then have a chance to be wrongly convicted
Sooo... (Score:5, Interesting)
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the issue is that the gain from high grades, regardless of how they're obtained, is far too high. So many companies won't hire anyone under 3.0 GPA, colleges won't accept you if you're not good enough in highschool, etc.
For people that are borderline, cheating on one test in one class could be the difference between their dream job and, in certain fields in certain areas of certain countries, no job. I fortunately don't live in such a place, but I know people who do. Make college acceptance process smarter
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That's usually only true if you're a raw grad with no contacts. If you REALLY want to go to grad school, but didn't have the grades, go get a job near/at a university, and volunteer part time for the lab you want to go to grad school in. You'll be accepted the next year, assuming you've proven yourself interesting.
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I made it out of College with a 2.4something. Obviously, Grad school was out of the question so I went into the working world. A few years later I went back to school. On paper my program required an undergrad GPA of 3.0, but I had some nice recommendations and had networked with the department chair.
In Grad school though I have been keeping a 3.9 without any real effort. Maybe there's something unique about my undergrad and grad schools, or maybe I'm more focused as an adult than I was in college, but
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For example, you will get a C when you deserve an F
Semester grades should also be given consideration in this discussion. In most accredited, legitimate graduate programmes, a C for the semester is failing, and more than two courses completed with a C are grounds for dismissal from the programme.
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A better lock just makes a better lock picker.
I have a tall fence I'd like to sell to you which will make you a better jumper.
Another application (Score:2)
I would like to apply this idea to see when a politician is lying. But then I realized it would just overload. So then I figure we should try to see if it can detect when they are telling the truth. That way you work with a much smaller data set. Damn near zero. So it looks to be a total failure.. Nevermaind
Oh that's easy... (Score:2)
return true;
}
Wouldn't this require specially designed tests? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gotta love this line:
Interesting. So their people have time to explain the methods to non-peers ... but not enough time to write them up for peer review.
Re:Wouldn't this require specially designed tests? (Score:5, Informative)
Are you trying to be disingenuous, or did you really not understand the GP's point? Reading comprehension indeed.
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Perhaps it's because peer review would reveal "statistical anomalies" in their algorithms... :)
Re:Wouldn't this require specially designed tests? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading comprehension FAIL. Caveon is too busy doing work to freely publish their methods, as you say for peer review. However, if you pay them (thus becoming a client), they have someone available to explain it to you.
Logic FAIL. If there is someone at the company who can take the time to explain the methods to clients (and I mean really explain, not just spout a bunch of buzzwords) then that same person can also take the time to write an article suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Also, methodology FAIL. Writing up results for publication is not just something you do when you have time, when you get around to it. In any real research field, it is an integral part of doing the work.
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Also, methodology FAIL. Writing up results for publication is not just something you do when you have time, when you get around to it. In any real research field, it is an integral part of doing the work.
Believing there's no world outside of Academia/Research FAIL? Last I checked companies selling a product don't get paid for research. Their "integral part of doing the work" is selling the product. At the end of the day nothing else matters. Publishing their methods in a peer reviewed journal would necessitate the marketing gains from proving their work to outweigh the advantage they'd be giving competitors insofar as the ability to duplicate their methods. And yes, any competing company worth their sa
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You can patent this kind of thing these days, you know. Not that I think algorithms and statistical analyses should be patentable, but they are. So Caveon could patent and publish, and not have to worry about their competitors gaining an unfair advantage. In any case, they are making very specific methodological claims which should not be accepted without peer review.
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By not doing the required work (submit peer review) are they cheating?
Ha! Yes, exactly. And they're not cheating to get a better grade; they're cheating to suck money out of the schools which will purchase their services -- many of which schools are no doubt in dire financial straits already. This is a level of scumminess which your run-of-the-mill cheating student can only dream of attaining.
Math students are screwed! (Score:3)
Teacher: I'm sorry I am going to have to fail most of you for cheating.
Students: But we didn't cheat!
Teacher: Then how do you explain how so many of you came to the same conclusion that 2+2=4?
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Oh really? (Score:2)
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
Or cheaters have become 70% less detectable.
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Or cheaters have become 70% less detectable.
Given how dumb a large portion of the cheater population is, I'd say that there's probably a big decline in actual acts of cheating. It might not be 70% since as you point out, the smarter cheaters might have adapted to the detection mechanisms, but I see three groups of cheaters. The first is too ignorant or dumb to pass the test. They're not going to be able to master methods that require them to foil statistical checks. The second is lazy. They cheat because it's less work than studying. Throwing in addi
Clarification (Score:2)
"cheating has declined about 70 percent"
You mean, people caught cheating has declined 70 percent.
False positives? (Score:3)
"Your goal is not to catch a bunch of people and hang them," Dr. Fremer said. "Your goal is to have fair and valid testing."
I hope administration agrees. When I was in university I wrote a group paper with one guy whose wife was a professional editor, she helped us out by reviewing it and making suggestions, we had to fight not to get expelled because our paper was "too well written" to be our own work.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
When I was in university I wrote a group paper with one guy whose wife was a professional editor, she helped us out by reviewing it and making suggestions, we had to fight not to get expelled because our paper was "too well written" to be our own work.
You had it proof read and edited by a professional. You did in fact "cheat", the work was not completely yours. This is essentially the same as buying your term paper on-line. You can rationalize it all you want, but the bottom line is your professor expected the work to be yours, not that of a "professional editor". I assume you went on to get an MBA?
Re:False positives? (Score:5, Informative)
Not even close. As long as the group did the research, the presentation, and the conclusions, a professional editor is only going to clean up grammar, suggest paper flows, etc. When I was in high school and in college, we were ENCOURAGED to get other people to proof-read our papers. If my mom or dad happened to be a professional writer, you damn well better believe I'd ask them to read my paper. Cheating is paying someone to write your paper for you, without doing any research or anything yourself.
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When I was in university I wrote a group paper with one guy whose wife was a professional editor, she helped us out by reviewing it and making suggestions
Unless you specifically asked the prof and got permission to do that, you should generally assume that even if a paper is given as a “group” paper, it should still only involve the collaboration of people who are actually in that class, and in that group.
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You did cheat. you had a professional editor review it.
False Positives (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet, there will also be false positives.
I did poorly on one test. Noticing this, I studied hard and greatly improved my grade in the next test. Would this flag up a warning that I'm a cheater?
Or for that matter, doing better on the 'harder' questions. Perhaps I decided to concentrate on doing those questions because they offered higher marks than the easier questions, or because I had a natural aptitude for some elements. I may have elected to study those materials harder.
Professors can't rely solely on 'statistical anomalies'. Illogical patterns may well have an explanation that has nothing at all to do with cheating or advanced knowledge of the test. Of course, we all know just how lazy a minority of our lecturers are.... and how likely they'd be to take the word of this agency as gospel.
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That is why they don't automatically assume you are a cheater:
When the anomalies are highly unlikely -- their random occurrence, for example, is greater than one in one million -- Caveon flags the tests for further investigation by school administrators.
You get flagged and they do a further investigation.
Re:False Positives (Score:5, Insightful)
That is why they don't automatically assume you are a cheater ... You get flagged and they do a further investigation.
Being accused of cheating in the academic world is kind of like being accused of a sex crime in the world at large -- the burden of proof is essentially on you to prove your innocence no matter what the law says, it's very difficult to prove you didn't do it, there are people who will go to insane lengths to get you convicted, and even if you're cleared the damage to your reputation is done.
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I did poorly on one test. Noticing this, I studied hard and greatly improved my grade in the next test. Would this flag up a warning that I'm a cheater?
That's a flag that is already used by teachers. That isn't the sort of more sophisticated statistical technique. I'm a calculus TA now, and I had a student last semester who got around a 75 on the first midterm and got a 100 on the next midterm, and a score in the high 90s on the last midterm. I'm pretty sure she just studied really hard (and it helps that she's fairly bright). But it is hard to tell in general what is happening. When one has 100 students in a class the probability is high that some will e
Confirmation Bias? (Score:2)
Since Caveon Test Security . . . began working for the state of Mississippi in 2006, cheating has declined about 70 percent.
How can anyone possibly know this? If they're detecting 70% less cheating, how do they know it is because students are cheating less rather than cheating in less detectable ways? The company methods aren't published or peer reviewed, and the graphs on the website are post-hoc graphs from excel (rather than whatever they use to data crunch - R, SAS, etc). As pointed out in the article, the company says nothing of type 1 (false positive) or type 2 (false negative) error rates. If students study together a
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If cheating drops that fast, it's a fair assumption. Cheaters getting craftier will happen, but not that fast.
The real problem is such a short time span to collect any data to actually come to this conclusion.
And so (Score:2)
The "dumbing-down" of America continues. Because it's much easier to turn the wrath of the "system" against anyone who stands out rather than actually following the steps involved to prove a person's guilt. Publicly flogging an innocent person is just as effective a deterrent as flogging a guilty one. It does, however, speak volumes about how those entrusted with authority view their powers.
While statistics may be absolutely certain about what the odds are over the long term of getting any particular number
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I wish people like you would think...or at least read the article.
Statically anomalies are red flagged for further investigation.
Just like if the same number came up 3 times in a row on a roulette wheel the pit boss, and the eye, will start paying the wheel little more attention.
Pretty Impressive (Score:3)
With more than 100,000 students tested, proctors could not watch everyone -- not when some teenagers can text with their phones in their pockets.
And how exactly did they read those text messages if their phone was in their pocket?
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And how exactly did they read those text messages if their phone was in their pocket?
If a student in the first class of the day texts the questions and/or answers to a student in a later class, they could read the messages at their leisure.
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The problem is texting the questions to a source and then selling them.
Deterrence theory vs retribution theory (Score:2)
How do you cheat with your phone in your pocket? (Score:2)
let's hope they are right (Score:2)
Let's hope they are correct in their assessment and it's cheating that declined 70% (by the way, why not more than 70%?) as opposed to something else happening - like people cheating 70% MORE during all other times, not just during exams to throw off the statistics during the exams.
proactive masking? (Score:2)
you can proactively mask your cheats with statistically valid test answers, right and wrong. thus, the cheats won't be caught by the test analysis software, it will be thrown off the scent
however, if you can actually master this methodology, and the test you are cheating on is a test in a college level statistical analysis class, perhaps you deserve the A nonetheless
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however, if you can actually master this methodology, and the test you are cheating on is a test in a college level statistical analysis class, perhaps you deserve the A nonetheless
If you can actually pull that off in a college-level statistical analysis class, couldn’t you have probably passed it without cheating in the first place?
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it's called humor
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Well, I didn’t think it was terribly funny, but I’d grant you that it was slightly thought-provoking.
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P.S.
I didn’t miss the joke, though – just thought it was more thought-provoking than it was funny, so that was the tack I took in reply.
It Better Be Good (Score:3)
Some emotional disorders can cause lapses in concentration in which complex questions are solved and easy questions answered incorrectly. I would think that any accusation or action in regard to cheating best have one heck of a strong proof or the lawyers will have a feeding frenzy.
Uh no? (Score:2)
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
Sounds awesome, lets punish those who started studying since they bombed the first test.
Cheating should be rewarded, not penalized... (Score:2)
Cheating is a part of everyday life and if you are going to compete in a world of cheats, you need to refine your cheating skills as early as possible.
How else are you supposed to be a competent financial analysis, stock broker, lawyer, etc.. Success in many fields is all based on being the best cheater.
In fact, there should be a requisite course taught in schools titled "How to cheat and get away with it".
Side effect demographic research (Score:2)
The most interesting part of this expensive and heavily studied technology will be the results (or lack of) with regards to demographics such as race, sex, parents income, political beliefs, whatever.
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The most interesting part of this expensive and heavily studied technology will be the results (or lack of) with regards to demographics such as race, sex, parents income, political beliefs, whatever.
Err, I should follow up, I'm not so much interested in "such and such group cheats more" but more interested in cognitive research.
For example its widely believed that men inherently have better spatial analysis skills than women.
So given "imagine a cluster of 64 computers wired in a six dimensional hypercube. They are on a straight linear shelf and must be placed one foot apart for cooling purposes. So theres a line of 64 PCs, which is 64 feet long. Each node connects to six neighbors. What is the long
Catching cheaters is missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be an increasing emphasis by schools on "catching cheaters". This seems to be missing the point.
We send our kids to school not so they can pass tests. I honestly do not care if my kid gets an "A" or an "F" on the test; I care that he actually learns the material. Tests are a tool that educators can use to help them determine if a child is learning the material but passing grades shouldn't be the goal. If students are cheating on tests then you need to look at the reason why. Is the material being presented in a way that is too hard for the child to understand? Is it not being presented in a way that interests the student? If a student is intererested, he will learn. If he learns, then he has no need to cheat.
Stop spending money on anti-cheating technologies. Spend money on improving the methods of education.
Freakonomics had a chapter on academic cheating (Score:3)
An example of the whole calss cheating. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember an example from my high school days. It was a statistics class and the teacher had three classes of the exact same subject. He would give the same test to all the classes. One would think that the situation was ripe for massive cheating and you would be correct.
When the first test was given, he purposely allowed the students to take their tests from a pile. Of course, there were more tests taken than there were students in the first class. These purloined tests made their way into the hands of students from the second and third classes who did unusually good on that test. By the way, the first class was composed of the best students. When the test scores were analyzed of course the second and third classes did much better than the first class. When the tests were handed back, everyone noticed that they had unexpectedly bad test scores. Here is what happened.
For the first class, the teacher lumped their scores in with the other two classes. Of course, this skewed their curve so that they received low marks. For the second and third classes, he did not do this and their average was so high that it was impossible to get a good mark. Their curve was "skewed" also. He then went into length about how he used statistics to teach us a lesson about cheating. He explained that the good students were aware of the cheating and did nothing, as such they were enabling the cheating. The students that distributed the stolen tests actually were damaging their test scores so they lost. The students that used the stolen tests also lost out because to the "skewed" curve. In the teachers words, he "SKEWED" all of us. Needless to say, we were all leery about cheating in his classes after that.
Bah, been awake all night, forgot to log in... (Score:3)
I was disqualified from a competition run by FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) when I was in high school because I scored so well I must have cheated.
It was multiple choice on 'Computer Concepts' I scored 98/100, second highest was 76/100.
That was pretty bad... but worse was the next year, I tried again... and was disqualified because I 'won' the previous year.
I ended up dropping out of school and getting a GED later because of the stress of it.
Hopefully this method is better
People are too educated (Score:5, Interesting)
The elephant in the room is that in American society, people are in general far more educated than they need to be. I have a bachelor's degree, none of the knowledge gained in pursuit of which[1] is of any help to me whatsoever in the course of my daily life, whether personally or professionally. And while I have no data, if the scuttlebutt is to be believed, I am very not alone in this. Furthermore, even a lot of the knowledge I gained in high school has proven completely useless to me[2]: outside of a class, I have never used any mathematics more advanced than the Pythagorean theorem.
As long as unreasonable academic credentials are required for jobs, though, there will be incentive for people to cheat—that is to say, cheating is not the problem; it's a symptom. Elminate the degree inflation in the job market, and you'll eliminate most of the cheating.
[1] Aside, possibly, from reading comprehension and writing skills, but those were not developed in college—I tested out of all the required English classes and all but one of the history classes—merely honed.
[2]The important words here are of course “to me.” I know lots of things which, objectively, are of no utilitarian use in my situation, but which I have sought out the knowledge of simply because it interested me; my enjoyment of them constitutes their usefulness.
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I realize that you're just being an asshole, and that you didn't even respond to my actual argument; but I'm bored, so I'll give you a straight answer regardless.
And while I have no data, if the scuttlebutt is to be believed, I am very not alone in this.
Did you say that you tested out of the required English classes?
Aside, possibly, from reading comprehension and writing skills, but those were not developed in college - I tested out of all the required English classes and all but one of the history classes - merely honed.
"Honed" might be an exageration [sic].
Part of communicating is realizing that there are varying levels of formality according to the circumstance at hand; diction appropriate to (or at least tolerable on), say, a pseudoanonymous tech-related website, might very well be less formal than that in an academic paper or something an employee might turn in to his boss. It's not like there is
Bad news for people with ADHD (Score:4, Interesting)
Many people with ADHD consistently do better at "hard" things than at "easy" things. I'm a pretty decent programmer, I could do calculus (though not always very well) by about 4th grade... and even now I can't do single-digit arithmetic with complete reliability. Assuming that people who show the pattern I will show on basically any test of my ability in any field I work in are "cheating" is a poor tactic at best.
As a possible indicator, maybe useful. As a definite rule, hell no.
CISSP Exam Cheating (Score:3)
The CISSP exam has special questions designed to catch cheaters or those who got a copy of the actual exam answers. At least a dozen questions are ambiguous and have more than one correct answer. The odds of two people answering all of those questions exactly the same, or exactly matching one of the the illicit copies of the exam answers is exceptionally low. The odds are low enough that you will get flagged for at least a manual audit of your test and test book.
Another dead giveaway is if your answers match almost exactly with the answers of someone else in the room. All the test books are not identical as they may have the questions in a different order or even different questions. If your answers to questions 1-40 exactly match the answers of your neighbor and he's using a different book, that would be suspicious too.
The irony is that there are cheaters for the CISSP exam, a certification that supposedly values honesty and ethics above actual knowledge.
Works only for multiple choice tests? (Score:3)
I don't think that this system works for a normal (non multiple choice) test. At least that would require the teachers to spend a lot of time typing each students results in a nonambiguous way.
On the other hand it is a little more difficult to use cell phones to cheat in a non-multiple choice test, because the entire answer of an exercise is too long to fit into an SMS.
I would be flagged every single time (Score:3)
I would be flagged every single time. Though earlier in life I cheated (and was good at it, got 100% on some exams, thanks to weak lecturer passwords), these days I don't, because I really want to learn, and not just get a piece of paper. Though I sometimes wonder if a hybrid approach could be better, since I do want the extreme grades, since they sometimes count.
However, I digress. I'm ADD and Bipolar. While most people think this means "stupid" and can appear stupid, it's isn't necessarily. Basically, some things I get hyper focused and excited on, to the extreme point of spending days awake, working on the problem, sometimes forgetting to eat/drink/etc. On a softer scale, I have trouble retaining attention for "easy" problems, and have less trouble retaining attention for "hard" problems. Because of this, when doing tests, quizzes and exams, I often fuck up the easy ones, and do extremely well on the hard ones.
Based on their stated idea, I'd be flagged as cheating. This would happen in every exam. I wonder how much a university (with a strict no-cheating policy (like they all have)) would tolerate a student continually coming up flagged as cheating, regardless of their ability to prove it. If I get reprimanded for cheating, in my university, then I'm gone for a minimum of 3 years, and other universities in the area, might be warned of me (or at least that's the threat).
That would fucking destroy me. I'm already devastated by my results, as they're always 75%+, but they almost never reflect my competency in the subject. Some subjects it works in my favour, but mostly it works against me.
Side note: In some of my earlier statistics courses, we were privy to some analysis done by the statistics lecturers on various courses, and what variables explain the variation seen in students scores. Consistently in each course it was found that quizzes, attendance, having read the textbook, assignments, and many other variables, were all lousy explanatory variables for the final exam result, and as such the greater the weight of the final exam, the more likely your overall result wouldn't reflect you (working under the axiom that the other material/variables, better explained your competency).
This is quite interesting, at the very least.
* I find it impossible to remain consistent between the usage of the words subject and course, but they both mean the same thing.
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so, what happens if the student doesn't have a cellphone, or has two, or is borrowing one from a friend?
Clearly all students should have to take the test naked to ensure they don't have a hidden cellphone.
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so, what happens if the student doesn't have a cellphone, or has two, or is borrowing one from a friend?
Clearly all students should have to take the test naked to ensure they don't have a hidden cellphone.
Can I volunteer to be a proctor at some all female university?
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I have a feeling you'd be disappointed. Have you ever seen groups of women, focused on academia, who aren't competing over men?
It's somewhat like the nude beach dream... once you've been to one, you really never want to go back. The ratio of attractiveness to people who should never be seen in public without a full coat is far too low.
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Great - so for $30, I can go to the store and buy a prepay cell phone. I can cheat for life for only $30! And that's for a brand new fake phone. I could get a used one for next to nothing.
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What if someone doesn’t have a cellphone?
What if someone has two?
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At least down here in Brasil people are already obliged to leave their cellphones during the tests, just common sense really. Also, any eletronic device like PMPs, earpieces, even wristwatches.
The real problem with statistical approaches is that they don't prove one has cheated. So unless it is only used as a way to start an investigation to gather proofs - such as, contacting the cellphone operator and seeing if there was any calls to/from the cellphone during the test, AND if they can also prove the cell
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So if I DON'T bring my cellphone to class, I fail? And the cheater next to me brings in two cellphones and only turns in one and uses the other one to cheat doesn't?
Not to mention a cellphone is a valuable thing which you don't want to just set down and walk away from. Even a classroom full of people would be hard-pressed to notice if a student doesn't bring in a phone but picks up "his" phone after the test, which happens to be an expensive model, and walks out of the classroom with it. The more people
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***cheating has declined about 70 percent***
Right. How in the world did they determine that? Most likely, they just made up a number.
All in all, I'd say the odds favor these guys being a bunch of card-carrying charlatans who couldn't catch a cheater if he had a "C" branded on his forehead. I'll bet that their road show has some nifty Power Point slides though.
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When the anomalies are highly unlikely -- their random occurrence, for example, is greater than one in one million -- Caveon flags the tests for further investigation by school administrators.
I know, I know, you didn't bother to RTFA.
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When the anomalies are highly unlikely -- their random occurrence, for example, is greater than one in one million -- Caveon flags the tests for further investigation by school administrators.
It does sound like they are acting responsibly and merely saying such marked tests need further scrutiny by the school, and only marking tests with a really low probability to be just lucky... but who knows what the individual schools do.