On the other hand the definition of predator is so far off it is not even funny. The author is correct. With that definition everything on the planet is a predator even plants.  That needs revised.

One of the things that people may need to understand is that with science and social studies content, sometimes the only way that  the testing companies can find to have students miss questions is to try to confuse them about answers. So they make questions like these with answers that are ambiguous and close to faulty so the students get confused and they can say the students don’t know the content when they miss the questions. These are perfect examples of how they do it and really the only way they can make students miss questions. Sorry, but that is what I see every year……and I have been teaching life sciences in 7th grade for over 25 years

See you at the final!

Figure out what aspects are universal and/or near-universal and bingo.

What are the aural equivalents of symmetry and the golden ratio etc? Seems an interesting question.

Pretty has a generally-accepted definition that’s only somewhat subject to variation and can be tested for.

The number of tests I’ve sat that were obviously made of fail pisses me off immensely. How the flying fuck are you meant to meaningfully test people if the person designing the test isn’t intelligent enough to say, correctly parse grammar for example?

Surely such folks should be at least as smart as 98% of the people sitting the test.

I once got robbed for 100% on a statistics and symbolic logic test because I answered the question exactly as it was written, ie I provided the requested ‘any’ values rather than all values as my lecturer expected me to ascertain via ESP or something.

So, I could do the same thing with prettiness of bird song.  I play a lot of bird songs to people, and ask them which ones are the prettiest.  Then, I abstract from that the sonic qualities that define prettiness, then I measure those sonic properties and declare the one that has them the prettiest.  Same thing.

Also, there appear to be species-universal evolved preferences for various things that we view as physically attractive (landscapes, people).   No reason to suppose that there aren’t also universal preferences for song.

also – during test prep teachers mostly focus on how to think like the exam writer (for example, if the question says x then the answer is likely going to be y) instead of teaching students actual science skills.  If you’ve ever taken any SAT or GRE test prep courses you’d understand.

Correlate quite well with the people with the personal and financial resources to teach their children how to game tests like this.

You’re simply wrong here.  In my experience, once kids get burned for knowing more than the test a few times, they decide tests are stupid.  Maybe some worry about “gaming” them, but others are too busy learning real things to care.

And, of course, not caring about tests is only a good outcome if everyone else understands they’re stupid. Even if there were a loose correlation, a metric that measures the wrong thing is always a problem.

Worse yet, poverty tends to be pretty rough on children’s academic performance.  This means that even if those educators are doing their absolute best, they can be fighting an uphill battle.  It also means that standardized testing serves as a way, intentional or not, of screwing kids in the poor neighborhoods.

Asking whether this affects the scores of most students is begging the questions of: “are the questions valid in the first place?” and “does the test accurately measure the knowledge it purports to measure?” If not, then corporal punishment is in order for the administrators and developers.

However it appears some idiots believe this is not the case and that they should be prepared without thought or review.