• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    271 year ago

    I can almost see a facebook post along the lines of:
    One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand how terrible things are, when fully 25% of the population are in the bottom quartile.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      81 year ago

      25%!? That’s nothing. Half of people are below average. That’s twice of what you quoted!

    • Karyoplasma
      link
      fedilink
      English
      4
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The gravitational pull of the moon.

      But you’re right, I cannot explain why gravity even exists.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        21 year ago

        Oh FSS please don’t cede a smart introspection to that billowing buffoon

        (nice followup though)

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    261 year ago

    I’m surprised it’s only 25%. These days, I’d figure at least 40% would be in the lowest quartile. Has anyone checked the math on this?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      31 year ago

      Let me try.

      I’ve got 4 quarters in a row, and each quarter represents 25% of people. I take the right most quarter and place it on the left-most quarter.

      40% is not right, there’s 50% in lowest quartile, 25% in the second, 25% in the third and 0% in the top.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        I take the right most quarter and place it on the left-most quarter.

        they were not ready for these world-class 220-IQ moves

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          21 year ago

          Behind closed doors on Greek Row those Sigmas and Taus … let’s just say they apply to an entirely different distribution, if you know what I’m saying.

    • andrew
      link
      fedilink
      English
      13
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      You’re probably one of today’s lucky 10,000.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        2
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        The worst thing about that XKCD comic is that I can’t get annoyed about seeing it for the thousandth time without risking a recursive loop of comic posting, me getting annoyed, comic posting to explain why I’m wrong to be annoyed, more annoyance… it’s a problem, though admittedly not my most pressing one.

  • BarqsHasBite
    link
    fedilink
    English
    258
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Half the students are below average! This is outrageous!

      • I Cast Fist
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        Outrageous! A quarter of the population should be 946.35 milipeople!

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11 year ago

          That’s a terrible idea!

          How would you even cut off 25% of everyone’s bodies to get a quarter of the population?

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          61 year ago

          It’s absolutely not. Median is a value in the middle of a sorted set and average is, well, average. In the set of 1, 7, 10: 7 is median and 6 is average.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            121 year ago

            as @force pointed out, ‘average’ has many meanings (haha). of course a lot of the time, average is used as ‘mean’. but…not always!

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            21 year ago

            I agree with this. In my stats class in college, we never conflated average and median. They meant two different things.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            9
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Idk man looking up a definition for “average” is like

            1. a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.

            and

            1. Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode. [from c. 1735]

            and

            1 a : a single value (such as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values

            doesn’t look like that dude’s using the word “wrong” to me, a lotta people and mathematicians definitely recall using “average” meaning median

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            51 year ago

            Such irony that this comment gets downvoted on a meme about failing education

            Even with a simple, yet very clear example

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              91 year ago

              What’s ironic here is your comment, lol. “Average” can and is absolutely used to say mean or median or any other average that is representative based on the dataset in question. When you ask a statistician to calculate an average of a dataset they probably won’t just go calculate the mean, they’ll think about which value is most appropriate in context.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            141 year ago

            No, it wasn’t wrong because it didn’t specify which average was meant. If it was “arithmetic average”, it would be wrong.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              71 year ago

              It would still be right. The test results are reported on a normalized curve so all measures of central tendency are all equal.

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                81 year ago

                “I have a ball”
                “So you have a red ball?”
                “No, it’s green”
                “If you don’t specify then the statement needs to hold for all balls to be correct.”

                And by the way: for the given plot, it is correct for all averages

                • @[email protected]
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  1
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  More like

                  “Balls are orange”
                  “That’s wrong”
                  “Ah but basketballs are balls and they are orange, gotcha”
                  “No, you just said balls, that’s too generic, if you meant basket balls you should have said basket balls.”

  • Margot Robbie
    link
    fedilink
    English
    151 year ago

    But then again, 25 percent of American students are also in the top quartile on standardized tests, so it evens out.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21 year ago

      People understand “glass half empty / glass half full”, but they can’t quite grasp a bell curve

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          1
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Consider an exam in which there are two questions: one very easy and one very hard. You’ll get a supermajority of people who answer the first question and two tiny tails - zero correct, two correct - such that the mode is very high and the outlayer groups are very small.

          Then well over half the people are in the median and mean.

        • Karyoplasma
          link
          fedilink
          English
          4
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Yes. In a normal, or Gaussian, distribution, the data is symmetrically distributed around the mean and thus mean (average value), mode (most frequent value) and median (middle value) all fall on the same point, which is the highest point of the curve.

      • Deebster
        link
        fedilink
        English
        61 year ago

        Ackchyually, they never said which average they meant, you just assumed mean.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        3
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        True, but those who know what “median” means probably also know what a “quartile” means, so if I used “median” it would’ve made my comment less of an “obvious, duh!” thing and spoil the unstated point I’m making as well as the joke.

        Best leave the mathematical incorrectness there to preserve the feeling of obviousness.

      • Flying Squid
        link
        fedilink
        English
        41 year ago

        Only all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average. It’s balanced out by them all turning into idiots when they become adults.

  • aisf*
    link
    fedilink
    English
    21 year ago

    Do you statistics? This guy clearly statistics.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      51 year ago

      Everyone should be in the top! Everyone should have unlimited resources from disabled addicts to military bioweapons developers - it should be a flat line, a plateau!

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        81 year ago

        Bioweapon developers should be shot in the street. Disabled addicts should be provided the proper help they need; and the education should be changed so there are less disabled addicts and bioweapon developers alike.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    41 year ago

    What’s sad is people are taking this seriously because someone believing this at face value as a bad thing isn’t entirely farfetched lol

  • JackGreenEarth
    link
    fedilink
    English
    191 year ago

    An education system that always fails a set number of people, regarless of how well people do, is a bad system, however.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      24
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      As Nougat said, this has nothing to do with passing or failing and is just a consequence of measuring performance. If 100 people take a test and the lowest 25 scorers all have a 95 out of 100 points then they are still in the bottom quartile regardless of the fact that every single student passed with flying colors.

      Showing a bell curve with no context means nothing.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      13
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I’ve been graded on a curve, and I’ve done it myself a couple of times. IMO, it’s usually a sign of a bad class (too much material being crammed in) or a bad teacher (didn’t get the concepts across to the majority of the students).

      That said, it’s usually done when it’s needed to prevent a significant portion of the class from failing. I remember a chem exam I took where a 16/100 was a C.

      The basic idea is that grades are normally distributed (ie a bell curve) which allows you to find the average grade range and shift the letter grade (eg a C or C+). There’s some professors who take the idea too far and rather than working off of an actual normal distribution try to fit the procedure to a simply skewed distribution or use it to pull down an 85/100 to a C, but in my experience that’s the exception to the rule, especially in math/science courses.

      Also, iirc this is a parody account.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        31 year ago

        I agree. My calc I professor would just silently scribble equations on the board, then turn around, gesture wildly, and shout “You see”.

        I remember right before the drop date, I had a 34 in the class, and he took time out of class to beg us to study because if too many people failed, he might have consequences.

        The only grade left was the final. I did much worse on it than the rest of the course, but my course grade shot up to the low 70s. Sure enough, I had the like 4th highest grade in the class.

      • Nougat
        link
        fedilink
        21 year ago

        I don’t believe that standardized tests are ever ghraded on a curve.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11 year ago

          You’re right, but it depends on how you want to think about it. They’re not necessarily graded on a curve, but with standardized tests you usually have both a history and a design target. They’re intended to produce (for example) a normal curve with a specific mean (eg mean IQ = 100) and they’ll adjust the test year over year to keep within those bounds. In other words, the grades don’t change but the test does.

          Curves exist because failing 90% of your class is a really bad look.

          • Nougat
            link
            fedilink
            21 year ago

            Oh I’m not saying standardized tests are perfect by any means. Plenty of flaws.

    • Nougat
      link
      fedilink
      601 year ago

      There will always be 25% in the bottom quartile, regardless of how well any students perform.

      • Poplar?OP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        161 year ago

        I think their point is that you could have people in the bottom quartile who learned what they are expected to, are capable, but are failed anyway because of how they compare to others.

        (Assuming curved tests really work like that, never bothered reading the pretty long grading policies)

        • Nougat
          link
          fedilink
          311 year ago

          Nothing about the post says anything about how many students passed or failed. Just that the lowest 25% are the lowest 25%.

          Yes, A = A.

        • Seraph
          link
          fedilink
          61 year ago

          Oh… you didn’t post this as a joke? This is depressing.

          • Poplar?OP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I did post it as a joke. Note how I started my comment with “I think their point is”, that isn’t my view :)

            There’s also difference between pretending to miss for a joke that dividing things into quartiles necessarily means a bottom 25% exists (what the meme does). And noting that it’s weird failing people based on how they do compared to others and not if they actually actually learn (me suggesting what the user JackGreenEarth was probably trying to get at).