About Me

LIU Jingchi, majoring in electrical engineering, GWU

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Hedging in Data Commentaries

Dear Professor,
I'm writing you a data commentary of the makeup exam.


Table 16: A Comparison of the Regular and Makeup Exam


Regular exam
Makeup exam
Average score (out of 100)
Time administered
Difficulty of questions
Number of students
Proctor
Board examples

Room environment

86
Wednesday, 7:00 p.m.
average
125
professor
yes

about 20C

72
Friday, 4:00 p.m.
average
25
teaching assistant
no (not considered necessary)
about 28C

First of all,  the table shows that the difficulty of questions is on average in both exams, so the difference between the average scores may be caused by some other objective factors. For example, there are only 25 students who attended the makeup exam, and statistics based on this small portion sample can lead distortion to the result. Students who took the makeup exam may just did not learn very well. Another factor might be the lack of board examples, but since it is not very necessary in exams, I do not consider it main causation of the score difference. Moreover, the room temperature during the make up exam is 28 C, which is much warmer than during the regular exam, so students may become sleepy in such environment. In a word, text question level is not the causation of difference between the two exams and result from the makeup exam can reflect the knowledge level of the students as the regular exam does.

Best regards,
teaching assistant

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