On the subject of scaling. In the UAC scaling report, they have a table that shows the varying HSC and Scales Mark at given percentiles for each subject. UAC states that you can't use the HSC and corresponding Scaled Marks as a simple conversion because there are a range of raw marks for each HSC, can someone explain this and would the range in scaled marks be significant?
Perhaps best to illustrate on a table below. Using my earlier example, suppose that the Band E4 cut-off was 79/100. The aligned marks between 90 and 100 are determined by linear interpolation as shown below (green to amber columns). This is how you get decimal points on the aligned marks.
However, what you see on your HSC results is the
rounded value (red column). In Table A3 of the UAC scaling report, the aligned HSC marks being shown are the
rounded ones (red column) corresponding to the particular percentiles.
As you can see this means that for the same
rounded aligned HSC mark there can be more than one raw mark mapped to it. For example, a rounded aligned HSC mark of 96.0 can correspond to a raw mark of either 91.0 or 92.0 (i.e. not a one-to-one relationship).
Scaled marks are a function of the
raw marks (green column), not the aligned marks. Each raw mark maps to a unique scaled mark (one-to-one relationship).
Since there can be more than one raw mark associated with a given
rounded aligned HSC mark then there can also be more than one scaled mark associated with this
rounded aligned HSC mark. In the example above, a rounded aligned mark of 96.0 will correspond to whatever scaled marks the 91.0 and 92.0 raw marks give (which will be different). The one that ends up on Table A3 of the UAC scaling report is whatever mark lands on the chosen percentile (e.g. 75th percentile).
Hope that makes sense.