University of Michigan SciOly Invitational!!!

[EastStroudsburg13]

Forgive me if I'm not grasping the full situation, but can't you match up the histograms with the event placements for the most part, to see roughly what raw scores other teams received?

I don't think there's any problem with an invitational releasing full raw scores, at least to the individual teams that competed (though I'm not super well-versed on FERPA law), but I also don't think it's an outlandish decision to release raw scores in histogram form, either. That just comes down to tournament preference, and I would hope that teams would value the experience enough to offset any concerns about not receiving raw scores.

Final point, each state has their own quirks that have good and not-so-good aspects. Michigan, while having a lot of invitationals and presumably being open within the Michigan community, is rather notorious for having scores that are impossible to find online, which helps nobody. There's a give and take for almost every state in the country (yes, even Pennsylvania).

[MIScioly1]

Forgive me if I'm not grasping the full situation, but can't you match up the histograms with the event placements for the most part, to see roughly what raw scores other teams received?

I don't think there's any problem with an invitational releasing full raw scores, at least to the individual teams that competed (though I'm not super well-versed on FERPA law), but I also don't think it's an outlandish decision to release raw scores in histogram form, either. That just comes down to tournament preference, and I would hope that teams would value the experience enough to offset any concerns about not receiving raw scores.

Final point, each state has their own quirks that have good and not-so-good aspects. Michigan, while having a lot of invitationals and presumably being open within the Michigan community, is rather notorious for having scores that are impossible to find online, which helps nobody. There's a give and take for almost every state in the country (yes, even Pennsylvania).

FERPA is kind of iffy. While I highly doubt we would get in any trouble (nobody else has yet), we have to be careful to play it safe with the University. I know Chalker has discussed this, and it is inconclusive. Whether or not Science Olympiad tests are student records is up for debate... again, I doubt anyone would sue us, but crazier things have happened! Basically, we just decided as a group after weighing different possibilities that histograms would be the best option. It is possible to generally discern where teams were at, just not down to the exact decimal place. But like you said, we really hope that the experience is the most important and best part.

[dcambrid]

Forgive me if I'm not grasping the full situation, but can't you match up the histograms with the event placements for the most part, to see roughly what raw scores other teams received?

I don't think there's any problem with an invitational releasing full raw scores, at least to the individual teams that competed (though I'm not super well-versed on FERPA law), but I also don't think it's an outlandish decision to release raw scores in histogram form, either. That just comes down to tournament preference, and I would hope that teams would value the experience enough to offset any concerns about not receiving raw scores.

Final point, each state has their own quirks that have good and not-so-good aspects. Michigan, while having a lot of invitationals and presumably being open within the Michigan community, is rather notorious for having scores that are impossible to find online, which helps nobody. There's a give and take for almost every state in the country (yes, even Pennsylvania).

FERPA is kind of iffy. While I highly doubt we would get in any trouble (nobody else has yet), we have to be careful to play it safe with the University. I know Chalker has discussed this, and it is inconclusive. Whether or not Science Olympiad tests are student records is up for debate... again, I doubt anyone would sue us, but crazier things have happened! Basically, we just decided as a group after weighing different possibilities that histograms would be the best option. It is possible to generally discern where teams were at, just not down to the exact decimal place. But like you said, we really hope that the experience is the most important and best part.

I did not realize that there could be any legal ramifications. The last thing you want to do is expose the University to any legal issues. I completely understand!

[MIScioly1]

I did not realize that there could be any legal ramifications. The last thing you want to do is expose the University to any legal issues. I completely understand!

Yeah, like most things in law, it's complicated It never really crossed our minds to look into it this year until after the competition, but since we have a lot more time before next year, we can look and see what any potential issues would be with the University. None of us are law students, so we are just trying to stay out of trouble We hope you guys had fun and that we'll see you next year!

On a totally separate note, in my own personal non-educated legal opinion, releasing raw scores would be a violation of FERPA unless there is explicit student consent. But really, who is going to sue anybody about that? Anyhow, FERPA is a discussion for a totally separate forum category! This was Chalker's opinion of the law: "FERPA. This is a federal law that restricts the release of personal student information. There are a lot of nuances involved in the law, but I know that several lawyers have looked at it and indicated that various SO related institutions might be at risk were they to release detailed information on competitor performances. There is some ambiguity here, but some of the guidance that's been provided is to NOT release raw data / tests."

[syo_astro]

And another update...on our website we have posted tests (except ecology and with pending updates on dynamic)!

https://www.umichscioly.org/ -> 2018 Results -> Tests (or Final Rankings) -> https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/fold ... A8ovBVlIU-

Please share with others! I'll also try to get them posted to the test exchange so the site can more centrally have tests (in case people don't know to stumble to certain invite websites). Note this also includes build scores (as histograms...which again, if you look at the histograms I really think you'll see what I mean by they're actually very useful presentations of the data).

[sunvenu]

Thank you so much for all your efforts in running this invitational so smooth and also publishing these valuable histograms.

For events like ThermoDynamics, Optics, and Hovercraft, where the theory and device testing scores are normalized, histograms are not that helpful. Would it be possible to publish the histograms for raw scores ( two separate histograms for each of these events -- theory test and device test )?

[MIScioly1]

Thank you so much for all your efforts in running this invitational so smooth and also publishing these valuable histograms.

For events like ThermoDynamics, Optics, and Hovercraft, where the theory and device testing scores are normalized, histograms are not that helpful. Would it be possible to publish the histograms for raw scores ( two separate histograms for each of these events -- theory test and device test )?

I would like to publish the raw test scores. If you take a look at hovercraft, you can see that I posted the raw test scores before curving (I ran that event). Unfortunately I do not have all of the raw test data for optics and thermodynamics - just the overall raw scores. I’m trying to track down the supervisors for those events so that I can post this data. If they still have it, it will be posted! It might just take some time.

We’re glad that you were able to attend! We hope to see you next year!

[Chameleon02]

And another update...on our website we have posted tests (except ecology and with pending updates on dynamic)!

https://www.umichscioly.org/ -> 2018 Results -> Tests (or Final Rankings) -> https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/fold ... A8ovBVlIU-

Please share with others! I'll also try to get them posted to the test exchange so the site can more centrally have tests (in case people don't know to stumble to certain invite websites). Note this also includes build scores (as histograms...which again, if you look at the histograms I really think you'll see what I mean by they're actually very useful presentations of the data).

Yes, thankyou for your releasing of the scores
For Mousetrap, it says that one team fell in the range from 0-25. This is a huge range! A score of 8 is astronomically different from a score of 22 to say. I was wondering if you could give more detail for this event

[MIScioly1]

And another update...on our website we have posted tests (except ecology and with pending updates on dynamic)!

https://www.umichscioly.org/ -> 2018 Results -> Tests (or Final Rankings) -> https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/fold ... A8ovBVlIU-

Please share with others! I'll also try to get them posted to the test exchange so the site can more centrally have tests (in case people don't know to stumble to certain invite websites). Note this also includes build scores (as histograms...which again, if you look at the histograms I really think you'll see what I mean by they're actually very useful presentations of the data).

Yes, thankyou for your releasing of the scores
For Mousetrap, it says that one team fell in the range from 0-25. This is a huge range! A score of 8 is astronomically different from a score of 22 to say. I was wondering if you could give more detail for this event

The Mousetrap top score was between 15 and 25. I’ll modify that later tonight when I have access to my laptop. I’ll make the ranges a little closer.

[MIScioly1]

Thermodynamics exam score distribution has been added to the folder shared with teams. Unfortunately, we do not have the raw scores for the Optics test, so I cannot make a histogram for it (which is a shame - I wanted to see them since I wrote the test!).