National Test Discussion

Locked
chalker
Member
Member
Posts: 2107
Joined: January 9th, 2009, 7:30 pm
Division: Grad
State: OH
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 56 times

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by chalker »

Uber wrote:.......Ecology is an extremely variable event where almost every tournament has a different style and focus. Yes, the style is somewhat different from other tournaments, but the content it tested was overly basic, with some random sections mixed in. The random sections involved guessing what the proctor wanted. Since most of the test was too easy, the series of fill in the blank biodiversity and random vocab was what determined most of the final rankings, and we ended up on the wrong end. When 25% of the teams score within 3% of each other, there's something wrong with the test.
Just wanted to chime in with one minor thing to contribute to this conversation. But I'd like to preempt any detailed questions about specifics to the Ecology event. I don't know any details of how the event was run or specific team answers, nor do I have easy access to them. I'm also not likely going to share scoring information beyond what's already publicly available.

One of the numerous checks and balances we have as part of the scoring process is a cross-correlation between each events rankings and the overall team rankings. This is built into my Excel scoring system and primarily used to catch major errors like having low score wins instead of high score wins. The math involved is pretty simple, and anyone with a copy of the final score sheet that is posted on the website could generate these correlation coefficient numbers.

However, it's trivial easy for me to just share these with you for a bit of perspective (note these include ONLY the competition events, not the trial events):

Max event correlation: 0.52
Average event correlation: 0.39
Standard deviation: 0.09
Min event correlation: 0.20

Ecology had a correlation coefficient of 0.28. This means it was about 1 standard deviation below the average correlation for events. There were several events with lower correlations.

In essence, what this means is that statistically, the resulting ranks in Ecology are reasonably well aligned across all teams with the overall team ranks.

Student Alumni
National Event Supervisor
National Physical Sciences Rules Committee Chair
maxxxxx
Member
Member
Posts: 284
Joined: November 30th, 2015, 8:11 am
Division: Grad
State: PA
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by maxxxxx »

chalker wrote: However, it's trivial easy for me to just share these with you for a bit of perspective (note these include ONLY the competition events, not the trial events):

Max event correlation: 0.52
Average event correlation: 0.39
Standard deviation: 0.09
Min event correlation: 0.20
Would you be willing to share how many events were over and under the mean and which events had the max and min correlation, or is that secret committee info?
Lower Merion Class Of 2017
KoolKalvin
Member
Member
Posts: 4
Joined: May 3rd, 2017, 1:37 pm
Division: B
State: IN
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by KoolKalvin »

The48thYoshi wrote:
efeng wrote:
KoolKalvin wrote: That's true, but those types of questions don't show up much on nationals tests.
Yeah; I've never seen a trivia question on a nationals disease test.
I believe they asked about spot maps on 2012 at UCF?
Yeah, I remember doing that test. That's why I remembered it.
lastTime
Member
Member
Posts: 2
Joined: May 23rd, 2017, 5:59 am
Division: C
State: VT
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by lastTime »

Tailsfan101 wrote:
Ouch! I feel so sorry for you, lastTime! My team's best finish was 16th in Disease Detectives. (Which me and Nerd_Bunny competed in :D)

+1, +1, (I described it as hectic mayhem) and +∞∞∞∞∞∞infinity! (I was backstage at the time, I was doing the student pledge! :))
Thanks. Congrats on making top 20, that certainly is an achievement.

And yeah, I was expecting it to be more organized, like a table for each state or something. Then again, we only had pins to trade, which was certainly not great.

It just seems like the professor didn't realize how unexciting his lecture was. At MIT, the speaker was really passionate about what she did and threw a few jokes in, and at UPenn, there was engagement from both speakers. However, here, there was no mention of application and seemed to flit from topic to topic.
Fairfax HS (Virginia)
Cornell/MIT/Regs/State/UPenn/Nats

ED: 19/--/--/--/--/--
Ecology: 5/38/1/2/20/19
Dynamic Planet 2/14/4/2/7/14
Remote Sensing --/6/1/4/16/36
Hydrogeology 5/22/1/1/1/7 :(
User avatar
Unome
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 4338
Joined: January 26th, 2014, 12:48 pm
Division: Grad
State: GA
Has thanked: 235 times
Been thanked: 85 times

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by Unome »

lastTime wrote:
Tailsfan101 wrote:
Ouch! I feel so sorry for you, lastTime! My team's best finish was 16th in Disease Detectives. (Which me and Nerd_Bunny competed in :D)

+1, +1, (I described it as hectic mayhem) and +∞∞∞∞∞∞infinity! (I was backstage at the time, I was doing the student pledge! :))
Thanks. Congrats on making top 20, that certainly is an achievement.

And yeah, I was expecting it to be more organized, like a table for each state or something. Then again, we only had pins to trade, which was certainly not great.

It just seems like the professor didn't realize how unexciting his lecture was. At MIT, the speaker was really passionate about what she did and threw a few jokes in, and at UPenn, there was engagement from both speakers. However, here, there was no mention of application and seemed to flit from topic to topic.
Hm personally I found the MIT speaker to be very dull as well. As for Nationals I'm sure anyone who hasn't done Astro or Remote would be rather confused as to what he was talking about.
Userpage

Opinions expressed on this site are not official; the only place for official rules changes and FAQs is soinc.org.
User avatar
daydreamer0023
Member
Member
Posts: 198
Joined: January 29th, 2015, 5:44 pm
Division: Grad
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by daydreamer0023 »

Unome wrote:
lastTime wrote:
Tailsfan101 wrote:
Ouch! I feel so sorry for you, lastTime! My team's best finish was 16th in Disease Detectives. (Which me and Nerd_Bunny competed in :D)

+1, +1, (I described it as hectic mayhem) and +∞∞∞∞∞∞infinity! (I was backstage at the time, I was doing the student pledge! :))
Thanks. Congrats on making top 20, that certainly is an achievement.

And yeah, I was expecting it to be more organized, like a table for each state or something. Then again, we only had pins to trade, which was certainly not great.

It just seems like the professor didn't realize how unexciting his lecture was. At MIT, the speaker was really passionate about what she did and threw a few jokes in, and at UPenn, there was engagement from both speakers. However, here, there was no mention of application and seemed to flit from topic to topic.
Hm personally I found the MIT speaker to be very dull as well. As for Nationals I'm sure anyone who hasn't done Astro or Remote would be rather confused as to what he was talking about.
Don't forget to mention the spelling errors...*cough* Adeninie *cough*
"I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale." - Marie Curie

Enloe '19 || UNC Chapel Hill '23

See resources I helped create here!
fast__facts
Member
Member
Posts: 18
Joined: March 21st, 2017, 3:49 pm
Division: C
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by fast__facts »

Anybody know when the awards ceremony and opening ceremony videos will be up? and where will they be on to find?
kenniky
Member
Member
Posts: 283
Joined: January 21st, 2016, 6:16 pm
Division: Grad
State: MA
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by kenniky »

maxxxxx wrote:
chalker wrote: However, it's trivial easy for me to just share these with you for a bit of perspective (note these include ONLY the competition events, not the trial events):

Max event correlation: 0.52
Average event correlation: 0.39
Standard deviation: 0.09
Min event correlation: 0.20
Would you be willing to share how many events were over and under the mean and which events had the max and min correlation, or is that secret committee info?
You can calculate this yourself lol.... all the data is there for you
Automated Event Assigner!
UMich 2018: Chem Lab, Fermi

[url=http://tinyurl.com/kenniky-so-test]Rate my tests![/url]
[url]https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/User:Kenniky[/url]

[url=https://scioly.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10008&start=34]2017 Nats = rip[/url]
[url=https://youtu.be/MCo8IAovjfw]ABRHS 2016[/url]
User avatar
bernard
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 2498
Joined: January 5th, 2014, 3:12 pm
Division: Grad
State: WA
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Has thanked: 186 times
Been thanked: 789 times
Contact:

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by bernard »

Here's some data you can play with. I've included the Pearson correlation coefficient comparing each event to overall team rank. This can be done for any tournament's results.
Attachments
sont-2017-correlation.xlsx
(69.28 KiB) Downloaded 204 times
"One of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there." – Steve Jobs
ScottMaurer19
Member
Member
Posts: 592
Joined: January 5th, 2017, 9:39 am
Division: Grad
State: OH
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: National Test Discussion

Post by ScottMaurer19 »

bernard wrote:Here's some data you can play with. I've included the Pearson correlation coefficient comparing each event to overall team rank. This can be done for any tournament's results.
Based on these results how is WIDI still an event (only partially joking)
Solon '19 Captain, CWRU '23
2017 (r/s/n):
Hydro: 3/5/18
Robot Arm: na/1/1
Rocks: 1/1/1

2018 (r/s/n):
Heli: 2/1/7 
Herp: 1/4/4
Mission: 1/1/6
Rocks: 1/1/1
Eco: 6/3/9

2019 (r/s/n):
Fossils: 1/1/1
GLM: 1/1/1
Herp: 1/1/5
Mission: 1/1/3
WS: 4/1/10

Top 3 Medals: 144
Golds: 80
Locked

Return to “2017 Nationals”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest