UAI vs. Normal Curve (1 Viewer)

[KeypadSDM]

Assuming that all students are normally distributed about a mean without any significant skewing, why do we try to make a linear fit of it with the UAI ranking system?

I've never really been told the advantages of the system, and it seems like people are getting massive UAI's, even though they're not exactly that smart. (And the same at the other end of the spectrum)

Why rank people when it seems like a more logical conclusion to mark them?

I mean what is really the difference between a student who got 66.0 and 66.5, when there REALLY IS a difference between a student who got 99.95 and 99.95?

 

[helper]

The UAI is only to determine who goes to university. They need to have numbers so they can say you make the course and who misses out. If there was a bell shape curve then there would be too many people on some ranks and make it more difficult to report cut offs.

The reasons you are giving are some of the reasons the board of studies went away from reporting scaled marks on the HSC.

 

[KeypadSDM]

Thankyou, quite helpful.

But the very fact that the students are normally distributed makes it very difficult to give them a UAI? It's just as hard to convert your rank into a UAI when you're in the middle of 1000 other people all pretty much just the same as you...

It's essentially the same problem, transferred to UAC.

Wait, I just answered my own problems.

 

[A2RAYA]

what the bloody hell's the point of the complexity of the dam UAI and the scaling process?....it simply should be what u get in an exam....ur 5 best exam marks and the average of them..nice and simple then we wouldn't have all these threads full of people wanting to know what UAI they're looking to get, why they didn't get it or how the scaling system works for different subjects

 

[helper]

Simple it is impossible to make exams of equal difficulty, so there is a need to standardize results.

Secondly you are saying 60 marks in general maths is the equivalent to 60 marks in Maths Extension which isn't correct.

 

[ur_inner_child]

I found visual arts and english extension 2 incredibly similar...

conceptual thinking, majorwork to reflect it, responding to texts/pictures/the culture around you

but they're scaled differently...

 

[Captain pi]

I found visual arts and english extension 2 incredibly similar...

conceptual thinking, majorwork to reflect it, responding to texts/pictures/the culture around you

but they're scaled differently...

Scaling is based on the cohort, NOT the course's intrinsic qualities: Visual Arts has a different candidature to English (Extension 2)
Otherwise, courses would be scaled to the same curve each year.