If the student uses words appropriately, and in proper context, the the LSA will grade him positively, and generally so would any professor.
And, if the frequency of words is simply different between the essay and the corpus, how will the grade be affected?
The essay chooses to indirectly present the expected/required facts, they will still be present, except they'll be simply cast in the role of the origin for their consequences; and it is these consequences what makes the main semantic body of the essay.
Now, speaking metaphorically: as the author wanders in territories not charted by the training corpus, what the trained LSA considers "the world" the author sees as an island in the ocean of consequences - no problem, the island is still presented, but the surface of the island relative to the whole map will be a smaller.
In other words the author just painted both the inside and the outside of the prescribed border lines - but the crux of the matter is: will the colour outside the borders be punishable?
If the student starts abusing terminology, then the LSA will grade him poorly, and so would any professor.
About the metaphors above... Let's assume the context of an essay about LSA: I'm pretty sure an LSA trained on an "orthodox" corpus will have difficulties with them, but do you really think human graders would still penalize them? If the answer is positive, I'm afraid US stepped on the newspeak path, restricting the use of vocabulary: doubleplus ungood in my opinion, would it already be crimethinkful by the present standards?
I can't find out what the reaction products are from this device. So water and ZnO goes in. What happens to the oxygen that was tied up with the hydrogen in the water?
The biggest hurdle would seem to be infrastructure. It's catch 22, mass production and distribution of H2 requires a H2 market to sell to, and vica-versa. Petrol did not really have this problem, the first generation of car owners bought their fuel in cans from the local pharmacy.
Hell, that's an idea! Let's sell H2 canisters at pharmacies.
Hydrogen stored under pressure has a considerably lower energy density compared to hydrocarbons that we use. Hydrogen is great when you look at the energy by weight, but if a tank is sitting in the back of a car, it doesn't matter whether it weighs an extra twenty kilos, what matters is how far a tank can make a car drive.
Well... one can always mix hydrogen with some carbon to store it, can't one now?
An automatic essay scoring will punish the creative minds, without even addressing the real problem, which is not enough educators.
I think you're confused about how the automated essay graders work. [...] And if they are using the words wrongly, then they deserve a poor grade.
Good grief, girl, I thanked you for the LSA reference; in return, please credit me that I know how to read and words like eigenvectors, matrix decomposition and correlation are not that unusual to me.
To be clear: the automated essay grader does NOT work like a "paint by numbers".
Isn't it, really?
Let's see if I read the LSA correctly and extrapolate how it is supposed to work for automated grading. Gross simplification: the method involves feeding the engine with the "corpus" - a set of "reference texts" - to form the term-document matrix - then the essays are presented in input and the grade is interpreted as how much the essay's matrix matches the corpus one: too close a match and it may be a plagiarism case, but if matching too little the essay is irrelevant (noise).
Now, imagine a brilliant student that decides to ignore the assignment borders - say: "discovery of America by Columbus, historical facts" - and go on a tangent in discussing how daring to act on greed when coupled with the ignorance of long forgotten science may result in discovery on short terms; but long time persistence in ignorance is likely lead to economical crises (google for: "Everything is dear in Spain except silver") and litigation.
Controversy and load aside, such an essay will be a "master painting" (will show the knowledge of the facts but will use them as pretexts to go beyond). If the LSA grader was fed with simple text books (the "standardized and approved numbers between the lines") as the training corpus, I wonder what would be the "grade" derived by LSA?
Honestly, I view the whole system as rather poor in general. Perhaps this will allow you a better insight into why I say that automated essay grading is a good thing for the American system... it certainly can't make it any worse...
Oh, but it can make it much worse:
1. you identified the problem as "rather our education system overloads teachers with students". Now, "automated essay grading" will not address the problem, but only keep it out of sight, out of mind better.
2. FTFA
Computers also have a hard time dealing with experimental prose. They favor conformity over creativity.
"They hate poetry," said David Williamson, senior research director at the nonprofit Educational Testing Service, which received a patent in late 2010 for an Automatic Essay Scoring System.
Yes, I hear you saying: "Well, it's already that bad, how can it get worse?" My answer: a "bubble sheet" system is neutral to the creative minds (most of them will even use their creativity to game the system). An automatic essay scoring will punish the creative minds, without even addressing the real problem, which is not enough educators.
The result of it: a system that is as much education as coloring between the lines is painting - how many painters/musicians/mathematicians (or even excellent trade persons) will survive such a system?
Rewrite your notes? If you aren't in college or high school, why would you? Sure, you might use them as source material for other documents, but why would you rewrite them?
Synthesis? Fix the things that are important? Recall later things that happen "in a flash of my mind", like some questions/ideas that you had during presentation but you didn't have enough time to scribble them during conference?
Why is a conference that you attend different from the courses during college? Only because you don't have to stay an exam at the end of it? (or... in other words, was your college important only because you can show your graduation diploma now? and to reach this point, you needed to scribble down until the knowledge got engraved into your brain)
Basically, the American education system has become dependent upon automated grading, due to the extensive use of bubble sheets, so that now we cannot get rid of automated grading without reworking the whole system.
Sheesh... that's truly bad! When did it start?
Not really sure. Likely before I was in school. I'm pretty sure I was tested mostly on bubble sheet once I got past elementary school. So, I'm guessing sometime in the early 80's or more likely sooner...
Long enough to be a real pain to change the system nowadays. Pity... I used the Berkeley's Physics text books in my uni time... the problems at the end of each chapter were a beauty: about 20-30 or them, the first ones you could answer immediately, the last ones needed some good days of work to solve properly.
Basically, the American education system has become dependent upon automated grading, due to the extensive use of bubble sheets, so that now we cannot get rid of automated grading without reworking the whole system.
High power lasers will smoke a typical mirror. There are reflective surfaces that could work, but you have to keep them perfectly clean. Not happening at sea for long... However, a laser will be easier to track back than a tracer round...
1 kg of water at 25 C against 100kW => approx 3 secs to reach boiling point. I think I can pump a bit more than 1 kg of water (eventually mixed with some ink to absorb better) along the line of your incoming laser beam. Doesn't need to be totally aligned, just to intersect your beam for some length.
Alternatively, use a jet of water mixed with a medium that's highly dispersive on your wavelength (I don't know, possibly just air bubbles).
(it is said that soviet cosmonauts just used a pencil).
How is this news? I have had a Samsung Precedent from Wallmart (Sprint network, CDMA) for 4 months now...
It would not be news if your purchase would have been the (only) one making 63% of the prepaid being sold - (then you would already know that 1 prepaid smart was available, so that this fact wouldn't be newsworthy). Since is not the case, now you know that yours is among 63% of others.
Also, I don't have anything against an automated grading engine, system, etc... as long as it is used as a tool and with a good (critical) knowledge that you use it only as a tool.
What I'm concerned about: the exclusive use of automated tools and selling the idea that you are still doing education.
Basically, you're looking from up high down at automated essay graders going "wtf? why would we go downhill?" while I'm sitting near the bottom looking up saying "hey, we could get kids to write actual essays, rather than fill in a bubble sheet!"
Why the heck one would need the automatic grading machine to simply ask the kids to write essays?
Actually, I can understand it... after staying long enough in the "bubble shit" (pun intended), one can no longer imagine (or trust) that a teacher could actually do a better job in grading. Yes, 't'll be more expensive, but "if you think education is expensive..."
automatic essay graders might drag an education system down... the USA is already below that.
I have reasons to believe US actually knew better sometime back... Derek Bok, the one I tried quoting above, was american after all.
---
did you just used LSA only to parse my post?
Because I'm having difficulty understanding you due to a few odd grammatical errors
Just from curiosity: was it that one? If it was, the translation would be "in the very context above and just now, did you exclusively used LSA to parse my post?"
as well as an enormous number of other interesting uses that would not qualify as "making humanity stupider".
Without any intention to be offensive, but... did you just used LSA only to parse my post?
Because it is not the use of LSA that I'm calling stupid, it is the use of the automatic grading engine (and also thanked you for pointing that LSA can be used to game the grading engine as an example of why grading engine is a stupid idea).
Without any intention to be offensive, but... do you speak English as a native language?
No, I don't.
Because I'm having difficulty understanding you due to a few odd grammatical errors (real grammatical errors, not style errors) that make it difficult to be certain of what you're trying to say.
My apologies, it can't be helped given the circumstances.
So, to be clear. LSA is a useful tool, and you agree. But then why are essay grading engines a bad idea?
Oh, girl, don't get me started. Please, I have too much to do in this brand new day. Anyway, since you asked, here are some hints:
1. for the same reasons I consider relying on grid test one of the stupidest mistake and selling the illusion that this is "the Education" the most horrible crime against children
2. for the same reason I consider the behaviorism anachronistic, and its current use a way to "tame" rather than "educate"
Some rationale for the above in my following replies.
Are grammar checkers and a spell checkers making humanity stupider?
If, money aside, grammar/spellchecker would be promoted as the only way to graduate a school and access to higher education, then yes.
... they're testing to see if the person understands the concepts properly, and LSA provides an objective way to evaluate that. In fact, LSA and essay grading engines tend to produce more consistent grading results than humans, which can be easily influenced by personal opinions about the author.
Objective evaluation in education? Is the purpose of education to produce consistent results, dam'd the quality of it? (you can't demonstrate that you didn't left a child behind if you don't dumb down the standards to accommodate. At least, not if you want to keep the costs under control, the very thing US thinks nowadays)
For... whatever sake you like, we are speaking of human minds, intellectual life and creation!!! The moment you apply "taming" to it (reinforce desired behavior, dissuade undesired one), you kill it!! To me Skinner was a charlatan of the same genus as the alchemists selling the illusion of transmutation to a king (objectivity in education has the same value as an alloy resembling gold). The only part in which he is right is in his saying "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."... but the fact that him (and the current "education system") uses this to drive towards a situation in which "knowledge, skills, thinking be damned... but let's not lose the tamed behavior" is criminal
So, no. Essay grading engines are not dumbing down at least America...
Yeah, no shit! I bet you can demonstrate it with numbers. Because that's what behaviorism is good for: producing undeniable numbers. Doesn't matter that these numbers are not education (but statistics, which come higher in the hierarchy than lies and damn lies).
In fact, considering that the essay writing requires more synthetic thought than multiple-choice tests that are spread all over the American
I just think you should know, if it weren't for your douchebaggy sig, I would have modded up this post.
Ah the irony of who calls douchebagery and on what grounds... here, buddy, have an opportunity to mod this post down... make if offtopic to still stay true to the/. modding rules and sleep well tonight.
as well as an enormous number of other interesting uses that would not qualify as "making humanity stupider".
Without any intention to be offensive, but... did you just used LSA only to parse my post?
Because it is not the use of LSA that I'm calling stupid, it is the use of the automatic grading engine (and also thanked you for pointing that LSA can be used to game the grading engine as an example of why grading engine is a stupid idea).
However, the level of knowledge of the subject necessary to cheat turned out to be greater than the knowledge of the subject necessary to write a good essay... so they suggested that the easiest way to cheat the system was to "know the subject, and write a good essay".
Or... download an application implementing the cheat engine (or pay a trifle to use it in the cloud), feed some reference papers and get the high-grade gibberish in a matter of seconds.
The everyday/official use of grading machines creates a market for the cheat engines and we can see the carousel of malware-antivirus replicated in education... or we can actually retain the teachers (as opposed to fire them) and ask them to do their job (properly... if possible).
BTW, thanks for the "Latent Semantic Analysis" reference, I'll store it carefully... just in case the humanity decides it needs to become more stupid in an automated way.
Slashdot Mirror
What utility is there in speeds beyond the 10-20Mbps required for video streaming?
Video streaming for the entire family, each one a different movie? (considering pron 3D, 1Gbps may not be enough).
Running a Tor node? Mirroring of TPB.ie?
Usually churchgoing people try to avoid Hell.
... in the afterlife. Meanwhile, they do tend to pave the way to hell with good intentions.
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/new_sopa/
Do sign, please. It may not help, but it can't hurt.
While at it, give CISPA a bump... while you still can.
It's called CISPA.
FTFY. Now, go and try to do something.
Money is now speech, so bribes are just a way to tell someone what you think. Why are you against the 1st amendment?
It thought that 1st amendment would protect any speech, so why would anyone's speech in opposition to bribes be suppressed?
You think I'm not getting the joke/irony/sarcasm? Well, maybe I do get it, but I'm not quite in the mood to take the things lightly: watch out CISPA.
What motivates this man to be so evil?
This is not half that evil as others... watch out CIPSA
If the student uses words appropriately, and in proper context, the the LSA will grade him positively, and generally so would any professor.
And, if the frequency of words is simply different between the essay and the corpus, how will the grade be affected?
The essay chooses to indirectly present the expected/required facts, they will still be present, except they'll be simply cast in the role of the origin for their consequences; and it is these consequences what makes the main semantic body of the essay.
Now, speaking metaphorically: as the author wanders in territories not charted by the training corpus, what the trained LSA considers "the world" the author sees as an island in the ocean of consequences - no problem, the island is still presented, but the surface of the island relative to the whole map will be a smaller.
In other words the author just painted both the inside and the outside of the prescribed border lines - but the crux of the matter is: will the colour outside the borders be punishable?
If the student starts abusing terminology, then the LSA will grade him poorly, and so would any professor.
About the metaphors above... Let's assume the context of an essay about LSA: I'm pretty sure an LSA trained on an "orthodox" corpus will have difficulties with them, but do you really think human graders would still penalize them?
If the answer is positive, I'm afraid US stepped on the newspeak path, restricting the use of vocabulary: doubleplus ungood in my opinion, would it already be crimethinkful by the present standards?
I can't find out what the reaction products are from this device. So water and ZnO goes in. What happens to the oxygen that was tied up with the hydrogen in the water?
It cools the planet and rusts the iron.
Came up with Zinc-air battery.
Once again, why those Swiss people need hydrogen?
The biggest hurdle would seem to be infrastructure. It's catch 22, mass production and distribution of H2 requires a H2 market to sell to, and vica-versa. Petrol did not really have this problem, the first generation of car owners bought their fuel in cans from the local pharmacy.
Hell, that's an idea! Let's sell H2 canisters at pharmacies.
(ducks)
Hydrogen stored under pressure has a considerably lower energy density compared to hydrocarbons that we use. Hydrogen is great when you look at the energy by weight, but if a tank is sitting in the back of a car, it doesn't matter whether it weighs an extra twenty kilos, what matters is how far a tank can make a car drive.
Well... one can always mix hydrogen with some carbon to store it, can't one now?
(ducks)
An automatic essay scoring will punish the creative minds, without even addressing the real problem, which is not enough educators.
I think you're confused about how the automated essay graders work. [...] And if they are using the words wrongly, then they deserve a poor grade.
Good grief, girl, I thanked you for the LSA reference; in return, please credit me that I know how to read and words like eigenvectors, matrix decomposition and correlation are not that unusual to me.
To be clear: the automated essay grader does NOT work like a "paint by numbers".
Isn't it, really?
Let's see if I read the LSA correctly and extrapolate how it is supposed to work for automated grading.
Gross simplification: the method involves feeding the engine with the "corpus" - a set of "reference texts" - to form the term-document matrix - then the essays are presented in input and the grade is interpreted as how much the essay's matrix matches the corpus one: too close a match and it may be a plagiarism case, but if matching too little the essay is irrelevant (noise).
Now, imagine a brilliant student that decides to ignore the assignment borders - say: "discovery of America by Columbus, historical facts" - and go on a tangent in discussing how daring to act on greed when coupled with the ignorance of long forgotten science may result in discovery on short terms; but long time persistence in ignorance is likely lead to economical crises (google for: "Everything is dear in Spain except silver") and litigation.
Controversy and load aside, such an essay will be a "master painting" (will show the knowledge of the facts but will use them as pretexts to go beyond). If the LSA grader was fed with simple text books (the "standardized and approved numbers between the lines") as the training corpus, I wonder what would be the "grade" derived by LSA?
Honestly, I view the whole system as rather poor in general. Perhaps this will allow you a better insight into why I say that automated essay grading is a good thing for the American system... it certainly can't make it any worse...
Oh, but it can make it much worse:
1. you identified the problem as "rather our education system overloads teachers with students". Now, "automated essay grading" will not address the problem, but only keep it out of sight, out of mind better.
2. FTFA
Computers also have a hard time dealing with experimental prose. They favor conformity over creativity.
"They hate poetry," said David Williamson, senior research director at the nonprofit Educational Testing Service, which received a patent in late 2010 for an Automatic Essay Scoring System.
Yes, I hear you saying: "Well, it's already that bad, how can it get worse?" My answer: a "bubble sheet" system is neutral to the creative minds (most of them will even use their creativity to game the system). An automatic essay scoring will punish the creative minds, without even addressing the real problem, which is not enough educators.
The result of it: a system that is as much education as coloring between the lines is painting - how many painters/musicians/mathematicians (or even excellent trade persons) will survive such a system?
Rewrite your notes? If you aren't in college or high school, why would you? Sure, you might use them as source material for other documents, but why would you rewrite them?
Synthesis? Fix the things that are important? Recall later things that happen "in a flash of my mind", like some questions/ideas that you had during presentation but you didn't have enough time to scribble them during conference?
Why is a conference that you attend different from the courses during college? Only because you don't have to stay an exam at the end of it? (or... in other words, was your college important only because you can show your graduation diploma now? and to reach this point, you needed to scribble down until the knowledge got engraved into your brain)
Basically, the American education system has become dependent upon automated grading, due to the extensive use of bubble sheets, so that now we cannot get rid of automated grading without reworking the whole system.
Sheesh... that's truly bad! When did it start?
Not really sure. Likely before I was in school. I'm pretty sure I was tested mostly on bubble sheet once I got past elementary school. So, I'm guessing sometime in the early 80's or more likely sooner...
Long enough to be a real pain to change the system nowadays. Pity... I used the Berkeley's Physics text books in my uni time... the problems at the end of each chapter were a beauty: about 20-30 or them, the first ones you could answer immediately, the last ones needed some good days of work to solve properly.
Basically, the American education system has become dependent upon automated grading, due to the extensive use of bubble sheets, so that now we cannot get rid of automated grading without reworking the whole system.
Sheesh... that's truly bad! When did it start?
The name of the software at least isn't very psuedo-sciency.
Easy Voice Biometrics
If it was based on psuedo-science it would have another name. Something like, Crystal Voice Biometrics, or Sonic Wave Biomagnetics.
One the other side, if it would have been a truly sciency software, the name would be something like: Professional or Ultimate Voice Biometrics.
High power lasers will smoke a typical mirror. There are reflective surfaces that could work, but you have to keep them perfectly clean. Not happening at sea for long... However, a laser will be easier to track back than a tracer round...
Water; plenty around. Heat capacity: 4.18 J/(g*K).
1 kg of water at 25 C against 100kW => approx 3 secs to reach boiling point. I think I can pump a bit more than 1 kg of water (eventually mixed with some ink to absorb better) along the line of your incoming laser beam. Doesn't need to be totally aligned, just to intersect your beam for some length.
Alternatively, use a jet of water mixed with a medium that's highly dispersive on your wavelength (I don't know, possibly just air bubbles).
(it is said that soviet cosmonauts just used a pencil).
How is this news? I have had a Samsung Precedent from Wallmart (Sprint network, CDMA) for 4 months now...
It would not be news if your purchase would have been the (only) one making 63% of the prepaid being sold - (then you would already know that 1 prepaid smart was available, so that this fact wouldn't be newsworthy). Since is not the case, now you know that yours is among 63% of others.
What I'm concerned about: the exclusive use of automated tools and selling the idea that you are still doing education.
Basically, you're looking from up high down at automated essay graders going "wtf? why would we go downhill?" while I'm sitting near the bottom looking up saying "hey, we could get kids to write actual essays, rather than fill in a bubble sheet!"
Why the heck one would need the automatic grading machine to simply ask the kids to write essays?
Actually, I can understand it... after staying long enough in the "bubble shit" (pun intended), one can no longer imagine (or trust) that a teacher could actually do a better job in grading. Yes, 't'll be more expensive, but "if you think education is expensive..."
automatic essay graders might drag an education system down... the USA is already below that.
I have reasons to believe US actually knew better sometime back... Derek Bok, the one I tried quoting above, was american after all.
---
did you just used LSA only to parse my post?
Because I'm having difficulty understanding you due to a few odd grammatical errors
Just from curiosity: was it that one? If it was, the translation would be "in the very context above and just now, did you exclusively used LSA to parse my post?"
as well as an enormous number of other interesting uses that would not qualify as "making humanity stupider".
Without any intention to be offensive, but... did you just used LSA only to parse my post?
Because it is not the use of LSA that I'm calling stupid, it is the use of the automatic grading engine (and also thanked you for pointing that LSA can be used to game the grading engine as an example of why grading engine is a stupid idea).
Without any intention to be offensive, but... do you speak English as a native language?
No, I don't.
Because I'm having difficulty understanding you due to a few odd grammatical errors (real grammatical errors, not style errors) that make it difficult to be certain of what you're trying to say.
My apologies, it can't be helped given the circumstances.
So, to be clear. LSA is a useful tool, and you agree. But then why are essay grading engines a bad idea?
Oh, girl, don't get me started. Please, I have too much to do in this brand new day.
Anyway, since you asked, here are some hints:
1. for the same reasons I consider relying on grid test one of the stupidest mistake and selling the illusion that this is "the Education" the most horrible crime against children
2. for the same reason I consider the behaviorism anachronistic, and its current use a way to "tame" rather than "educate"
Some rationale for the above in my following replies.
Are grammar checkers and a spell checkers making humanity stupider?
If, money aside, grammar/spellchecker would be promoted as the only way to graduate a school and access to higher education, then yes.
... they're testing to see if the person understands the concepts properly, and LSA provides an objective way to evaluate that. In fact, LSA and essay grading engines tend to produce more consistent grading results than humans, which can be easily influenced by personal opinions about the author.
Objective evaluation in education? Is the purpose of education to produce consistent results, dam'd the quality of it? (you can't demonstrate that you didn't left a child behind if you don't dumb down the standards to accommodate. At least, not if you want to keep the costs under control, the very thing US thinks nowadays)
For... whatever sake you like, we are speaking of human minds, intellectual life and creation!!! The moment you apply "taming" to it (reinforce desired behavior, dissuade undesired one), you kill it!! To me Skinner was a charlatan of the same genus as the alchemists selling the illusion of transmutation to a king (objectivity in education has the same value as an alloy resembling gold).
The only part in which he is right is in his saying "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."... but the fact that him (and the current "education system") uses this to drive towards a situation in which "knowledge, skills, thinking be damned... but let's not lose the tamed behavior" is criminal
So, no. Essay grading engines are not dumbing down at least America...
Yeah, no shit! I bet you can demonstrate it with numbers. Because that's what behaviorism is good for: producing undeniable numbers. Doesn't matter that these numbers are not education (but statistics, which come higher in the hierarchy than lies and damn lies).
In fact, considering that the essay writing requires more synthetic thought than multiple-choice tests that are spread all over the American
I just think you should know, if it weren't for your douchebaggy sig, I would have modded up this post.
Ah the irony of who calls douchebagery and on what grounds... here, buddy, have an opportunity to mod this post down... make if offtopic to still stay true to the /. modding rules and sleep well tonight.
(if this helps, I sincerely feel ashamed that I posted the GP. I do have excuses but only excuses. Thanks)
as well as an enormous number of other interesting uses that would not qualify as "making humanity stupider".
Without any intention to be offensive, but... did you just used LSA only to parse my post?
Because it is not the use of LSA that I'm calling stupid, it is the use of the automatic grading engine (and also thanked you for pointing that LSA can be used to game the grading engine as an example of why grading engine is a stupid idea).
However, the level of knowledge of the subject necessary to cheat turned out to be greater than the knowledge of the subject necessary to write a good essay... so they suggested that the easiest way to cheat the system was to "know the subject, and write a good essay".
Or... download an application implementing the cheat engine (or pay a trifle to use it in the cloud), feed some reference papers and get the high-grade gibberish in a matter of seconds.
The everyday/official use of grading machines creates a market for the cheat engines and we can see the carousel of malware-antivirus replicated in education... or we can actually retain the teachers (as opposed to fire them) and ask them to do their job (properly... if possible).
BTW, thanks for the "Latent Semantic Analysis" reference, I'll store it carefully... just in case the humanity decides it needs to become more stupid in an automated way.