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forgottenrealmsrp · 6 years ago

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Hello, I am very new to DnD and I would really like some tips on how to play and roll for certain things (Im not too good with examples) etc. etc.

Howdy! Mod Nate here coming at you with some Tips for Beginners. There’s a hell of a lot to cover that I cannot fit into one post (because, let’s be honest, that would be a nightmare), but I will try my best. So, without further ado, hold onto your butts.

The Three R’s

I find there are three main aspects to remember (and master!) when starting off in DnD or other such TTRPG’s. You can sort them into three categories:

Rules,

Rol(l/e)s, and

Roleplaying

Of course there are heaps of other things to consider in game, but for a beginner, it can get overwhelming very quickly, so we’ll just stick to the Three R’s for now.

Rules

What better thing for a game than rules! The first thing you hopefully would have done if you were gearing up for your first game is to get your hands on a Player’s Handbook (For DnD 5e), or your RPG’s respective rulebook. Hobby stores, book stores, libraries, even video game shops might stock a physical copy of our favourite WotC volumes, but you can also secure them online wherever you may find them.

Once you have your grubby little goblin hands on a handbook, give it to a friend, and have them read it to you. If that gets too boring, have them explain the rules in detail - you’ll need a pen and a notebook! If that is too time-consuming or - more likely - you don’t actually have any friends, you’ll have to settle for a hurried and often last-minute explanation of the core mechanics of the game, the finer details of which will be left unaddressed until you get your creative spirit crushed by your mean Dungeon Master, or local rules lawyer.

(Remember kids, if you aren’t sure of where to locate one of these “rules lawyers”, simply talk out loud about your homebrew weapon or Pathfinder game, and they will be sure to find you!)

In this fabled Player’s Handbook you will find a fun breakdown and walkthrough of the game’s races, classes, and backgrounds, all of which you will need to read through several times and then immediately forget. Only after you have asked yourself “Which Bard School is going to make Sildaar Hallwinter not a steaming pile of crap?” for the fifth time in 10 minutes, can you move on to “equipment” and “rules”. Make sure to read these thoroughly, because you’ll learn them pretty quickly after your party’s Paladin once again forgets how many d10s to roll. It’s two, Derek. You asked the exact same question last round.

Idiot.

Rol(l/e)s

Once you manage to wrap your head around the rules, you get to the meat of the sandwich - rol(l/e)s. Whoever came up with this idiotic word hybrid (me) needs to report to their editor (also me) and get his ass whooped (still me).

Now, I know you’ve gotten this far and thought “Wait, Nate, that may have rhymed but you haven’t actually given any tips yet?!??!?!?!!/1!?!?!?!?1?!???????????”. To that, I say yes (or no?), I have(n’t?) given you tips for how to play and roll for certain things, because the biggest tip I have for you is coming right up.

Wait for it.

You cannot build a dragon’s tower without strong foundations.

Meaning: Only once you have “mastered” the rules and basics of roleplaying (and rolling!) will you be able to spread your beautiful dragon wings and soar as a damn good DnD player. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to learn and remember every single mechanic or rule in the book! Because that would be a nightmare and if you can do it, you will be God. No questions asked. But hey! People make mistakes, or remember things wrong, or guess incorrectly, or even make it up as they go along. Having the handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide on hand for these occasions will save everyone’s sanity at least once, but knowing when to draw the line between fairness and fun will make everyone’s play a whole lot better.

So! Now that you’ve become God, rolling and role-ing (not a word) are your new best friends. And you know who makes the best friends? DICE! Just google it and have fun, kids, but remember that you have to eat and sleep somewhere warm and cozy tonight, so try not to build your hoard of shiny forbidden snacks too quickly, now. All you will need for starters is your standard 7-dice set: d4, d6, d8, d10*, d12, and d20.

*The d10 often comes in pairs to act as a percentile dice. The die with the ten’s (00, 10, 20, 30, etc.) will act as the ten’s place, and the other die will act as the one’s place. So, if you roll a 60 and a 9, you get a really funny number. If you roll a 00 and a 0, that’s 100! If you roll a 00 and a 1, however, that’s a 1. You die in game and you die in real life. Goodbye.

The handbook will tell you all the dice you will need to roll in order to both run the game, and make your character! That’s right! Maths begins even before the game does. Even Death themself cannot escape the point-buy system. Just submit.

Stats are fun.

What do they mean? What do they do? Who even knows what Constitution does?! I certainly don’t! But that’s where you’re in luck, bucko.

This post is already long enough without getting to the good stuff, so I’ll keep it simple.

Strength - a measure of how well you can do stuff with your muscles. Skills like Athletics (aaaaaaand nope just athletics, huh, really? No fish-lifting skill? Huh? Cowards) will benefit from having some damn good muscles. Also you can stab stuff real good.

Dexterity - a measure of how deft, nimble, and stealthy one can be. Contributes to skills like Acrobatics and Stealth, unsurprisingly. If you can move good, you can groove good. I’d add a skill for dancing if I were you, WotC.

Constitution - I lied before when I said I had no idea what constitution does, but it was only partly a joke. Constitution contributes to skills like not dying, staying alive, and stopping being dead. Sometimes it determines how much health you have. Sometimes it means you can drink an entire frog. Don’t ask.

Intelligence - Are you a smart cookie? Can you learn languages fluently in a short span of time? Can you destroy scores of defenceless troops with a single pillar of flame? Can you read? Are you kept awake at night by their screams? Intelligence makes you good (or not) at skills like History, Religion, Arcana, and being a nerd. Oh wait. No one is good at being a nerd. Sorry nerdlord. Also, if your intelligence is under 10, you can’t read! Just like me.

Wisdom - Not the smartest cookie in the shed? Like to eat leaves? You and me both, kid! Wisdom is a measure of your STREET SMARTS! so you can throw those nasty pervert kobolds off their rhythm. Unfortunately, starting equipment does not include a money clip. It makes you good at eating dirt and walking through forests and stuff. Also I think you can pet dogs really well?

Charisma - If you’ve ever played a bard, you would know what this is. If you haven’t played a bard, it’s not too late! Quick! Choose a Warlock or a Cleric if you want a Charisma based build! Choose the entertainer background if you must! -sigh- but if you insist, charisma is a measure of how easily you can quite literally charm the pants off a dragon. Also, sometimes you can roast people really well?

Having high skills is all fine and dandy, but the next tier of DnD player character power is owning your low skills. Have low constitution? Your tiefling is sickly or has a weak stomach! Low intelligence? Your character can’t read or write! Low charisma? You cause every single npc interaction to end with you being punched in the face. There is colour and interest in every aspect of your character, so make sure to let your character sheet represent your character as well as you can!

But how do you determine these stats?

Looking in your class description, you will see under the ‘Quick Build’ section the recommended stat scores, backgrounds and/or spells for that character. These are NOT mandatory, but I find them to be a helpful guideline for how to keep your character functional and, well, alive. Stat scores themselves can be determined a few different ways: Point-buy (I have no idea how this works but it looks like a lot of maths and that’s homophobic, so); Cascading, and rolling.

Cascading (or at least that’s my name for it, I have no other way to describe it) is where you take the values 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 and assign each to one of your stats. For example, before adding racial stat modifiers, I could assign my barbarian’s stats as follows:

STR: 15, DEX: 13, CON: 14, INT: 8, WIS: 10, CHA: 12.

I may have a character-based reason for assigning my barbarian a relatively adequate Charisma score. Maybe he was a particularly intimidating character, or perhaps his iron-will makes his Constitution a 14. Maybe he likes to dance. You could have a particularly burly mage with a strength score of 15, just because you feel like it. Maybe your cleric is part of team sweet-flips? Or your monk could study tomes night and day to get her Intelligence to a lofty 17 points post-modifiers. Balancing stat scores so that you don’t die is awesome, but having a change to shout “YOU DO NOT SEE GROG!” and win 9 times out of 10? Priceless.

Rolling your stats is perhaps the most widely-used way to determine stats, but to be safe, ask your DM (or get crafty if you’re the DM!) about their preferred method. It’s pretty simple: roll 4d6 (the six-sided dice four times), noting down each individual roll. After four rolls, you cross out the lowest roll, and add the remaining three. Repeat five more times and you have some good good stats, bro! Don’t forget to add your racial stat modifiers before you assign your stat scores!

Modifiers seem pretty confusing as a newbie, but there is a handy table in the PHB to help you keep track. Alternatively, you could subtract 10 from your score, and then half what you have left, making sure to round down! A score of 19 would have a modifier of +4 (19 - 10 = 9/2 = 4.5 ≈ 4, rounding down). A score of 8 would have a modifier of -1 (8 - 10 = -2/2 = -1). Pretty simple, right?

So now I think I can finally address whatever the F*$# I mean by ‘Roles’. What the heck is a role? Do you mean roleplaying? No, dear reader, I do not. A ‘role’ is what I like to call your position in the party. Because yes, on the unlikely occasion that you do manage to wrangle a group of people willing (or able) to play DnD with you, you still have to play with other kids, Derek. That means that the typical balancing applies. You cannot just have a 7-person party filled entirely by bards. Or bees. Though I would prefer the bees. Who would want 7 bards? That sounds like the start of a bad joke.

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you have enough bases covered in the traditional party makeup that you won’t die immediately, but you also don’t have to deal with 7 goddamn bards, Derek, I swear to God-

You’ll want someone to hit stuff, someone to get hit, someone to help those who get hit, and someone to hit things when you don’t want to get hit. This could be solved any number of ways. Get creative, go hog wild. But not buck wild, Derek. I will not have the “Seven Buskateers” at my table again, do you hear me?!

This brings us to the finale. I’ve been writing this post for half an hour, and we’re finally getting to the good stuff. Thanks for stick with me so far. How about dropping your favourite stardew valley bachelor/ette down in the replies if you’ve read this far? Mine’s Elliot, because he’s beautiful and I love him, just like I love you. :3

Roleplaying!

It’s in the title! The very mechanics of the game! So, the question you’re asking me is: “Nate, how the Flippity Doo Daa do you roleplay?????????”

And I reply, “How are you making those noises with your mouth? Where am I?! Who are you? Why can I hear each individual question mark even though they shouldn’t have a place in the mortal coil? What are you?!”

And then I tell you about my favourite thing to tell my own players.

The easiest character to play is one that exists. So? What does that mean???

It means that YOU, my dead, dear nerd, can’t just pull a self-insert every single dang game, Damn it Derek! No one LIKES YOU! GO HOME! You have this opportunity to think of a fun, unique concept, and roll with it. So, how can you create the next Taako, or Nott, or Yashee’rak or Caduceus?

If you have a concept to work from, that’s great! If not, start from the ground up. Who is your character? What are their likes, dislikes, loves, hates, loyalties, vendettas? I often like to establish both a backstory and a goal for them to accomplish, the simpler the better, to get you on the right track. Perhaps a Neverwinter begger wishes to open their own tea shop in Ba Sing Se? A cursed child of an angel and a demon takes it upon themself to avenge their brother’s death? A simple farm girl falls in love and follows her princess Buttercup across Faerûn? You name it!

Some good questions to ask yourself about your characters personality could also include:

What would they kill for?

What would they die for?

What would they watch someone else die for?

What are some rumours your party members would have heard about your character?

What would they think of your favourite meme?

How do they treat their mum? How would they treat your mum?

Do they have any recurring nightmares? Why?

Etc. Etc. Think of them as a real being, with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears! The more detailed you can get in theory might help in the long run. If you find yourself deviating from these details, however, don’t sweat! That’s a character’s natural development and progression as a character! In fact, if things don’t change as you play, you might have to have a look at your play style. Loosen up. No one is one emotion their entire lives. Characters lie! They hide things and change details and cheat and steal! But they also act kindly, even randomly, and change and grow. Encourage that. Let them grow. They (and your party members!) will thank you for it!

I think that’s all I have in me for now, and oh man there are so many more things I could mention. DMing in itself will have to wait for another day, of course, but I hope this helped! I’m going to die now.

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dailytechnologynews · 6 years ago

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HP Spectre x360 (Kaby Lake G) Review

So, about 2 weeks ago I got my HP Spectre x360 with the i7-8705G processor, and I've decided to a little review on it, just for fun. My model has a 4K touchscreen display, 12 GB of DDR4 2400 (so dual channel memory doesn't work quite correctly), the i7-8705G (4 CPU cores, 4 GB of HBM2, and 20 CUs), and a 256 GB NVME SSD from Samsung, the one that comes with the laptop. I'm mostly going to be testing performance but I will touch on all aspects of the laptop.

Overview

The HP Spectre x360 is a 15 inch laptop that launched a couple of months ago at $1300-$1500; HP has sales pretty frequently so if you're lucky you can get this for about $1300 like I did. It comes with only one option for Kaby Lake G, the i7-8705G. You can configure the RAM from 8 to 16 GB and configure the SSD from 256 to 2 TB. The screen only comes in at 4K. The Spectre also includes a fingerprint scanner and a Windows Hello compatible webcam for quick sign in. IO is pretty good as well; HP includes one T3 port, one USB type C port, one USB 3.1 port, one HDMI port, a headphone jack, and an SD card reader. It can be charged either through its AC port or through the USB type C compatible ports, but only if you own one of HP's branded chargers. HP's software will reject anything that isn't from HP. Also, you can open up the Spectre (with some difficulty) and upgrade the RAM and SSD and even fiddle with the heatsink if you want. Finally, the Spectre is just under 20 mm in thickness and weighs about 4.6 pounds. Okay, with all that being said, let's get into it.

Chassis

The first thing you notice with a laptop is how it looks, and the Spectre looks and feels really good. It's very sturdy and feels very premium. I previously owned an HP Envy x360 15 inch, and I have to say it's actually not that much better. It definitely looks better with its gold accents though. There is very minimal keyboard flex and the screen hardly bends at all. Another nice upgrade over the Envy is the fact that its fans are configured in a much smarter way: intake on the bottom (like the Envy but with more holes) and output on both sides of the laptop (instead of out of the back). Using dual fans pushing air out of the sides makes it much easier to keep the Spectre and you cool, especially if you're putting the Spectre on top of something like a blanket. Overall, it's very thin and it's a little heavy but not too heavy.

Keyboard and Touchpad

This keyboard is about the same as on the HP Envy x360. It's pretty decent, and the backlight is pretty good. It's also full size, so you get your numpad as well. There's nothing particularly special about the keyboard. It's good. Some people might dislike the half sized up and down arrow keys, but personally I'm fine with it. The touchpad is okay, it's not quite as tall as I would like but it works good enough. No deal breakers here, though the Spectre isn't really amazing me with the keyboard and touchpad.

Display

While a 4K display does consume more power than a 1080p display, I have to say it's an incredible monitor. 4K may be overkill at such a small display, but damn does it look good. Just sublime. And compared to the Envy x360, the brightness is much better too. It's not the brightest monitor out there, but it'll do the job even in the sun. Colors look good as well, I haven't noticed any obvious gradients where colors gradually changed. On my Envy I could clearly see bands of colors on something like the sky. The Spectre has no problem displaying all the colors you need to see a smooth transition from one type of blue to another similar, but distinct blue. Bezels on the left and right are very thing, and while they're kind of thick on the bottom and top, it does allow for more space for the speakers and touchpad, as well as the webcam which is directly above the display.

Speakers

Kind of a mixed bag. I actually liked the speakers on the Envy, because they got pretty loud without distorting. When I couldn't get my cheap soundbar connected to my TV working one time, I used the speakers on the Envy instead, and the experience was pretty good. However, the experience with the Spectre is different. The speakers are now spread out over above the keyboard, and on the bottom of the chassis on the closest lower left and right corners. It just sounds a little off. It's totally fine, but it's not special.

Battery life

Battery life is okay, definitely not great though. Using the better battery life plan, setting the brightness to half, and running a Slow Mo Guys video at 4K resolution and 50 FPS, the laptop lasted a total of 3 hours and 46 minutes. For such a large battery, it's a disappointing result, but it's not surprising. The Vega M GPU, even though it was not used for this task, does require power even when it's idling, perhaps 5 or so watts. That's not nothing, and especially over time it's going to drain the battery.

Noise

Under full load, and even when watching 1080p60 videos or other high resolution content, the fans get pretty loud. Thankfully this keeps the system cool, but again, it does get loud. If you wanted a really quiet machine, the Spectre is not for you. Of course, there's a very good reason why it gets so loud and requires two fans.

Performance

Yep, that's right, it's because this laptop has alot of horsepower. The Spectre is based on the i7-8705G, which has not just an Intel CPU, but also a Radeon GPU. The Intel CPU has 4 cores, 8 threads, running at a maximum 4.1 GHz turbo and features Intel HD 630 graphics for use in low load applications. The Radeon Vega M GPU (which is really a Polaris GPU) has 20 CUs running at a maximum turbo of 1011 MHz and 4 GB of HBM2. On paper, this combination looks really good for everything from video editing to professional applications like CAD to gaming, and it should perform similarly to 7700HQ laptops with GTX 1050s to 1050Tis. Well, we'll see about that.

Our test suite includes these applications: Cinebench R15, 3D Mark Firestrike and Timespy, Ashes of the Singularity, Civilization VI, Total War: Rome II (with the new graphics patch), and the Witcher 3.

On Cinebench R15, the i7 scored 623 points on its best run, but in other runs the scores were as low as 480 and usually hovered around 550. This is likely due to thermal throttling. The i7 should boost very well under short loads but will fall behind if it can't finish a task before throttling sets in.

In 3DMark's Timespy, the Kaby Lake G processor scored 2167, and in Firestrike it scored 5161. Laptops with 7700HQs and 1050Tis typically make about 3000 points in Timespy and 7000 points in Firestrike. This is nearly a 50% difference, and it may surprise some of you. How could a 20 CU and 4 core CPU combo lose so heavily? Perhaps this processor lies closer to the 1050, but 1050Tis are not 50% faster than 1050s. Before I explain why the discrepancy exists, let's move on.

Using the standard preset at 1080p with the DX12 API on Ashes, the GPU focused benchmark scored an average framerate of 27.1 FPS (with all batches being GPU bound entirely) and the CPU focused benchmark scored an average of 16.8 FPS. I don't have any other hardware to compare this with, but I'm using mostly standardized benchmarks so that you can compare your own hardware or other benchmarks yourself.

Using the medium preset at 4K with the DX12 API on Civilization, the graphics benchmark ended up having an average frametime of 37.226 ms, which is mostly playable, and a 99th percentile of 44.947 ms. I'd recommend turning the settings down to low or the resolution down to 4K, but on a game like Civ it seems like a waste to not use 4K since the FPS doesn't matter that much. The AI benchmark resulted in an average turn time of 22.01.

And for our final benchmark, we have Rome II, which recently got some updates and new DLC. Using the in game benchmark with ultra settings at 1080p, the Kaby Lake G processor was able to achieve a framerate of 30.7. I'd recommend turning the settings down a tad since framerate is somewhat important for Total War and you won't be caring too much about looks when you're doing battle.

Now, I did say I was going to test Witcher 3, but not actually benchmark it since there's no point. I wanted to bring attention to the fact that the 8705G can play Witcher 3 with a blend of low and ultra settings (because going from low to ultra on some settings does not impact performance) at about 45-60 FPS. Overall, the Kaby Lake G processor is very impressive given the cooling limitations of the laptop's design.

Now, why is the processor underperforming? On paper, it should be a good deal faster than a 1050 and at least only a little slower than a 1050Ti. Well, earlier I mentioned thermal throttling playing a part in Cinebench's performance, but in this case I believe something else is more to blame: power throttling. You see, the CPU and GPU only have 65 watts between them. A 7700HQ alone can use 35-45 watts. The HBM and GPU also need to get power. What will happen is that the harder the GPU is hit, the less power the CPU is allowed to use, and in some games you may see the i7 go as low as 2 GHz on all cores. However, I personally am very happy with performance.

Conclusion

Overall, the HP Spectre is a very well balanced machine. It's pretty thin, it's got good performance, it has a 4K display with enough brightness and color accuracy, it has good battery life, and it's not super expensive. If I had to give this a score out of ten, I'd give it a 9. Points off for disappointing battery life and performance, but you will have a hard time finding a laptop this thin, with this battery performance and computational power, at this price point. It's not a gaming laptop, but it works fine as one. Stuff like CSGO should work really well since it's a game highly dependent on the CPU and not the GPU. With many laptops, you make compromises like having a really big battery and then having almost no performance to speak of, or having a great GPU and CPU but it weights like 15 pounds, is more than an inch thick, and costs a fortune. The Spectre on the other hand has no major compromises and is an excellent choice for people who don't need a laptop that's the best at only one thing.

#hardware #Computer #Technology #Tech #News

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fraddit · 7 years ago

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My recent experience with depression, anxiety, and ADHD

I figured I would make a post about this, because I know that at least a few of my mutuals are dealing with some or all of these things themselves and might find this helpful. Who knows? Very long, very personal, but mostly positive post under the cut. Like, really, more information than you probably ever wanted to know about me and my problems. Proceed, if you feel so inclined.

First, a brief history, for context. Throughout elementary and high school, I consistently scored in the 99th percentile on standardized tests. Then, I almost flunked out of high school, barely got my diploma, took a year off, and started art school college for an animation English degree. I was going to write novels. After a year or two of that, I decided I could write without a degree, so I dropped out. What followed was a decade of several strangely varied and unrelated jobs and no novel writing. Working a stable corporate gig while not accomplishing (or even pursuing) any of my personal creative goals was DESTROYING MY SOUL. So, I quit my job to become a full-time student and finish my degree, because at least that was kind of in the same universe as actually being creative. And now, a year or two later, here I am, 32 and a few semesters away from finally finishing that English degree. Clearly brains won’t get you everywhere kids.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 7 and was on some form of medication until sometime in high school, when I decided I didn’t want to take it anymore, for reasons I won’t bother getting into. It never occurred to me to even consider medication again until this semester, when everything fell apart.

ADHD can impact a person in a multitude of ways. For me, the biggest impact is probably executive function issues. I can wander through the garden of my ideas all day long. I cannot make myself sit down and do work, no matter how much I may want to. For personal goals, that means a literal solid decade of zero accomplishment. For school, that means procrastinating papers until the night before or morning of or sometimes even two weeks late, on the night before the professor has to turn in their grades. And the level of personal effort it took to make myself write that two-week-late paper was herculean in measure, when it really should not have been.

I’ve since learned that many professionals suspect this very common procrastination habit of ADHD folks is actually a kind of self-medicating by way of adrenaline via stress response. Which sounds entirely plausible to me, because every semester since I’ve been back at school, I’ve found myself pushing the risky boundaries of procrastination further and further, like a drug addict needing a higher dose to get a fix. A very unsustainable and unhappy process all around.

Which brings me to this semester, when the wheels finally fell off the car, and one of the campus psychologists found me crying on a bench outside the counseling center because they were closed for lunch and meetings, and I didn’t know where else to go. I couldn’t do any of my homework, was crying every day, and having panic attacks. To put it simply, I was a fucking mess.

I made more appointments at the counseling center, I spoke with my professors about what I was going through (hello more panic attacks), and for the first time in over a decade, I remembered that there are medications I should maybe try, and I made an appointment to see the psychiatrist at the campus medical clinic. (Also, guys, if any of you are students, look into your campus resources. There’s support for everything at my school. There’s even an office that’s only there to help guide students to all the other support options. Seriously, mental health, child care, food, housing, you name it. Get the help you need.)

When I explained everything I had been going through, the very nice psychiatrist at the clinic told me, with an unsettling degree of alarm in her voice, that I was “deeply depressed”. Which, I knew, but she really sounded shockingly concerned. And it’s like, jeeze, I maybe didn’t realize just how bad things had gotten, because I was just living with this shit every day, so it was kind of ‘normal’ for me.

Anyway, she agreed to start me on meds for my ADHD. The one I’ve been taking is called Vyvanse. I started on the lowest dose and have been gradually increasing. A month in, I’m at a dose where I can clearly tell a difference, and it’s having a noticeable impact. I wrote a meta yesterday. I was thinking the thoughts, and just sat down and wrote it. This morning, I got up and wrote some more, just notes for future things to do, but I did it. Fuck, I’m writing this fucking thing right now.

I thought that maybe I should write this shit out, and it took a little while sitting and getting my momentum going, but now I’ve written 800 1300 1650 words. And I’m sitting here actually crying as I type this paragraph, because this small little thing is like the biggest fucking thing in my life.

I don’t have any way to accurately explain what a big deal it is for me to have actively decided to write something and then to have actually actively produced content of my own volition and design, that wasn’t assigned to me and didn’t have a due date or a grade attached. And, that I’ve done it repeatedly now…

OVER TEN YEARS. Over ten years I went, writing almost nothing. Might as well have been zero words. Guys, I’ve been walking around with a trilogy of speculative fiction novels in my head for over ten years, I’ve been planning another unrelated novel for the last two. I’ve been planning something like 30 fanfics, across two fandoms, and another 20 metas for the past year. Part of me probably assumed feared that none of that would ever see the light of day. But now, it suddenly feels like maybe I’ll actually manage to write some of it. And I’m hoping like fuck that it’s not just a fluke.

Now, the ADHD meds aren’t the only thing I’ve been doing to contribute to this ‘good place’ I’m in currently. I’ve been going to counseling. Apparently, I have a lot of negative feelings about myself and my inability to accomplish jack shit for a whole decade. Who would’ve guessed? I also have weekly sessions with the disabilities accessibility team at my university to work on external methods for dealing with my executive function issues. (Again, if you’re a student, utilize your university resources. You’re already paying for them with tuition.) And, this is obviously not an option for everyone, but even before I started the ADHD meds, I took advantage of the fact that I live in a state where certain botanical products are easily and legally available and found a brand of gummies that really help with my anxiety and panic attacks. (They’re high cbd, low thc, so calming and don’t make you high.)

So far, the meds aren’t 100% sunshine and rainbows. With the dose I’m at right now, where I’ve been Getting Things Done, I can actively feel the drug, which is… not the greatest. I feel jittery, vaguely anxious, like I’ve drank way too much coffee but worse. And, the decreased appetite is something I really have to be vigilant about, because I don’t have any room to lose weight. These were both known possible side effects of stimulant meds, so I wasn’t surprised, and perhaps the doctor and I will be able to fine tune the dosing or try another med or something. But right now, I think I’m really leaning toward, I’ll put up with the side effects, because holy shit, I can finally actually do what I want to do. Also, I think (and Nice Doctor Lady thinks) the new higher dose is having a positive, stabilizing impact on my mood.

I guess my reason for writing all of this, other than pure catharsis, is to say, if you’re dealing with shit like this, try to be willing to consider all your options. For whatever reason, I didn’t think about trying medication for my condition. It wasn’t even like I was anti-meds or something. I just didn’t even think about it. Not until a few months back, when I sent a random ask to an ADHD blog on here, asking how they managed to make themselves write, and they responded with I had to get medication. Suddenly, it was like… why have I not been considering this option? So, this story is for anyone else out there that maybe also hadn’t thought to consider this option.

And really, not just the medication. I’m a hide behind walls, overly independent, do things on my own, never ask for help sort of person. But, I guess I finally reached a level of desperation where I was like, Clearly, doing this by myself, my way, has not gotten me the results I want. So, fuck it, I’m going to ask for help from every professional available to me. Which, I’m very lucky, and currently have ready access to multiple resources in a way not everyone does, but being open to getting this much assistance is very new territory for me.

I’m not really sure how best to wrap this up. If anyone actually read all of this, I’m astonished and… Hi, I guess? You really know quite a bit about me now. Hopefully, I haven’t scared anyone off. And, if anybody has further questions about any of this or you want to talk about your own issues, I’m sincerely available for that. I think the world we live in today makes it too easy to feel completely alone, even when you’re surrounded by people, and I’m here for chats, if you need it.

#well...#okay then #this exists #just a short 1650 word personal essay #yikes #anyway #shut up fraddit #fraddit talks mental health #give this topic it's own tag #in case i make any follow up posts

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kristinsimmons · 5 years ago

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Another MCQ Test on the USMLE

By BRYAN CARMODY, MD

One of the most fun things about the USMLE pass/fail debate is that it’s accessible to everyone. Some controversies in medicine are discussed only by the initiated few – but if we’re talking USMLE, everyone can participate.

Simultaneously, one of the most frustrating things about the USMLE pass/fail debate is that everyone’s an expert. See, everyone in medicine has experience with the exam, and on the basis of that, we all think that we know everything there is to know about it.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there – especially when we’re talking about Step 1 score interpretation. In fact, some of the loudest voices in this debate are the most likely to repeat misconceptions and outright untruths.

Hey, I’m not pointing fingers. Six months ago, I thought I knew all that I needed to know about the USMLE, too – just because I’d taken the exams in the past.

But I’ve learned a lot about the USMLE since then, and in the interest of helping you interpret Step 1 scores in an evidence-based manner, I’d like to share some of that with you here.

However…

If you think I’m just going to freely give up this information, you’re sorely mistaken. Just as I’ve done in the past, I’m going to make you work for it, one USMLE-style multiple choice question at a time._

Question 1

A 25 year old medical student takes USMLE Step 1. She scores a 240, and fears that this score will be insufficient to match at her preferred residency program. Because examinees who pass the test are not allowed to retake the examination, she constructs a time machine; travels back in time; and retakes Step 1 without any additional study or preparation.

Which of the following represents the 95% confidence interval for the examinee’s repeat score, assuming the repeat test has different questions but covers similar content?

A) 239-241

B) 237-243

C) 234-246

D) 228-252

The correct answer is D, 228-252.

No estimate is perfectly precise. But that’s what the USMLE (or any other test) gives us: a point estimate of the test-taker’s true knowledge.

So how precise is that estimate? That is, if we let an examinee take the test over and over, how closely would the scores cluster?

To answer that question, we need to know the standard error of measurement (SEM) for the test.

The SEM is a function of both the standard deviation and reliability of the test, and represents how much an individual examinee’s observed score might vary if he or she took the test repeatedly using different questions covering similar material.

So what’s the SEM for Step 1? According to the USMLE’s Score Interpretation Guidelines, the SEM for the USMLE is 6 points.

Around 68% of scores will fall +/- 1 SEM, and around 95% of scores fall within +/- 2 SEM. Thus, if we accept the student’s original Step 1 score as our best estimate of her true knowledge, then we’d expect a repeat score to fall between 234 and 246 around two-thirds of the time. And 95% of the time, her score would fall between 228 and 252.

Think about that range for a moment.

The +/- 1 SEM range is 12 points; the +/- 2 SEM range is 24 points. Even if you believe that Step 1 tests meaningful information that is necessary for successful participation in a selective residency program, how many people are getting screened out of those programs by random chance alone?

(To their credit, the NBME began reporting a confidence interval to examinees with the 2019 update to the USMLE score report.)

Learning Objective: Step 1 scores are not perfectly precise measures of knowledge – and that imprecision should be considered when interpreting their values.

Question 2

A 46 year old program director seeks to recruit only residents of the highest caliber for a selective residency training program. To accomplish this, he reviews the USMLE Step 1 scores of three pairs of applicants, shown below.

230 vs. 235

232 vs. 242

234 vs. 249

For how many of these candidate pairs can the program director conclude that there is a statistical difference in knowledge between the applicants?

A) Pairs 1, 2, and 3

B) Pairs 2 and 3

C) Pair 3 only

D) None of the above

–

The correct answer is D, none of the above.

As we learned in Question 1, Step 1 scores are not perfectly precise. In a mathematical sense, an individual’s Step 1 score on a given day represents just one sampling from the distribution centered around their true mean score (if the test were taken repeatedly).

So how far apart do two individual samples have to be for us to confidently conclude that they came from distributions with different means? In other words, how far apart do two candidates’ Step 1 scores have to be for us to know that there is really a significant difference between the knowledge of each?

We can answer this by using the standard error of difference (SED). When the two samples are >/= 2 SED apart, then we can be confident that there is a statistical difference between those samples.

So what’s the SED for Step 1? Again, according to the USMLE’s statisticians, it’s 8 points.

That means that, for us to have 95% confidence that two candidates really have a difference in knowledge, their Step 1 scores must be 16 or more points apart.

Now, is that how you hear people talking about Step 1 scores in real life? I don’t think so. I frequently hear people discussing how a 5-10 point difference in scores is a major difference that totally determines success or failure within a program or specialty.

And you know what? Mathematics aside, they’re not wrong. Because when programs use rigid cutoffs for screening, only the point estimate matters – not the confidence interval. If your dream program has a cutoff score of 235, and you show up with a 220 or a 225, your score might not be statistically different – but your dream is over.

Learning Objective: To confidently conclude that two students’ Step 1 scores really reflect a difference in knowledge, they must be >/= 16 points apart.

Question 3

A physician took USMLE Step 1 in 1994, and passed with a score of 225. Now he serves as program director for a selective residency program, where he routinely screens out applicants with scores lower than 230. When asked about his own Step 1 score, he explains that today’s USMLE are “inflated” from those 25 years ago, and if he took the test today, his score would be much higher.

Assuming that neither the test’s content nor the physician’s knowledge had changed since 1994, which of the following is the most likely score the physician would attain if he took Step 1 in 2019?

A) 205

B) 225

C) 245

D) 265

–

The correct answer is B, 225.

Sigh.

I hear this kind of claim all the time on Twitter. So once and for all, let’s separate fact from fiction.

FACT: Step 1 scores for U.S. medical students score are rising.

See the graphic below.

FICTION: The rise in scores reflects a change in the test or the way it’s scored.

See, the USMLE has never undergone a “recentering” like the old SAT did. Students score higher on Step 1 today than they did 25 years ago because students today answer more questions correctly than those 25 years ago.

Why? Because Step 1 scores matter more now than they used to. Accordingly, students spend more time in dedicated test prep (using more efficient studying resources) than they did back in the day. The net result? The bell curve of Step 1 curves shifts a little farther to the right each year.

Just how far the distribution has already shifted is impressive.

When the USMLE began in the early 1990s, a score of 200 was a perfectly respectable score. Matter of fact, it put you exactly at the mean for U.S. medical students.

Know what a score of 200 gets you today?

A score in the 9th percentile, and screened out of almost any residency program that uses cut scores. (And nearly two-thirds of all programs do.)

So the program director in the vignette above did pretty well for himself by scoring a 225 twenty-five years ago. A score that high (1.25 standard deviations above the mean) would have placed him around the 90th percentile for U.S. students. To hit the same percentile today, he’d need to drop a 255.

Now, can you make the argument that the type of student who scored in the 90th percentile in the past would score in the 90th percentile today? Sure. He might – but not without devoting a lot more time to test prep.

As I’ve discussed in the past, this is one of my biggest concerns with Step 1 Mania. Students are trapped in an arms race with no logical end, competing to distinguish themselves on the metric we’ve told them matters. They spend more and more time learning basic science that’s less and less clinically relevant, all at at the expense (if not outright exclusion) of material that might actually benefit them in their future careers.

(If you’re not concerned about the rising temperature in the Step 1 frog pot, just sit tight for a few years. The mean Step 1 score is rising at around 0.9 points per year. Just come on back in a while once things get hot enough for you.)

Learning Objective: Step 1 scores are rising – not because of a change in test scoring, but because of honest-to-God higher performance.

Question 4

Two medical students take USMLE Step 1. One scores a 220 and is screened out of his preferred residency program. The other scores a 250 and is invited for an interview.

Which of the following represents the most likely absolute difference in correctly-answered test items for this pair of examinees?

A) 5

B) 30

C) 60

D) 110

The correct answer is B, 30.

How many questions do you have to answer correctly to pass USMLE Step 1? What percentage do you have to get right to score a 250, or a 270? We don’t know.

See, the NBME does not disclose how it arrives at a three digit score. And I don’t have any inside information on this subject. But we can use logic and common sense to shed some light on the general processes and data involved and arrive at a pretty good guess.

First, we need to briefly review how the minimum passing score for the USMLE is set, using a modified Angoff procedure.

The Angoff procedure involves presenting items on the test to subject matter experts (SMEs). The SMEs review each question item and predict what percentage of minimally competent examinees would answer the question correctly.

Here’s an example of what Angoff data look like (the slide is from a recent lecture).

As you can see, Judge A suspected that 59% of minimally competent candidates – the bare minimum we could tolerate being gainfully engaged in the practice of medicine – would answer Item 1 correctly. Judge B thought 52% of the same group would get it right, and so on.

Now, here’s the thing about the version of the Angoff procedure used to set the USMLE’s passing standard. Judges don’t just blurt out a guess off the top of their head and call it a day. They get to review data regarding real-life examinee performance, and are permitted to use that to adjust their initial probabilities.

Here’s an example of the performance data that USMLE subject matter experts receive. This graphic shows that test-takers who were in the bottom 10% of overall USMLE scores answered a particular item correctly 63% of the time.

(As a sidenote, when judges are shown data on actual examinee performance, their predictions shift toward the data they’ve been shown. In theory, that’s a good thing. But multiple studies – including one done by the NBME – show that judges change their original probabilities even when they’re given totally fictitious data on examinee performance.)

For the moment, let’s accept the modified Angoff procedure as being valid. Because if we do, it gives us the number we need to set the minimum passing score. All we have to do is calculate the mean of all the probabilities assigned for that group of items by the subject matter experts.

In the slide above, the mean probability that a minimally competent examinee would correctly answer these 10 items was 0.653 (red box). In other words, if you took this 10 question test, you’d need to score better than 65% (i.e., 7 items correct) to pass.

And if we wanted to assign scores to examinees who performed better than the passing standard, we could. But, we’ll only have 3 questions with which to do it, since we used 7 of the 10 questions to define the minimally competent candidate.

So how many questions do we have to assign scores to examinees who pass USMLE Step 1?

Well, Step 1 includes 7 sections with up to 40 questions in each. So there are a maximum of 280 questions on the exam.

However, around 10% of these are “experimental” items. These questions do not count toward the examinee’s score – they’re on the test to generate performance data (like Figure 1 above) to present in the future to subject matter experts. Once these items have been “Angoffed”, they will become scored items on future Step 1 tests, and a new wave of experimental items will be introduced.

If we take away the 10% of items that are experimental, then we have at most 252 questions to score.

How many of these questions must be answered correctly to pass? Here, we have to use common sense to make a ballpark estimate.

After all, a candidate with no medical knowledge who just guessed answers at random might get 25% of the questions correct. Intuitively, it seems like the lower bound of knowledge to be licensed as a physician has to be north of 50% of items, right?

At the same time, we know that the USMLE doesn’t include very many creampuff questions that everyone gets right. Those questions provide no discriminatory value. Actually, I’d wager that most Step 1 questions have performance data that looks very similar to Figure 1 above (which was taken from an NBME paper).

A question like the one shown – which 82% of examinees answered correctly – has a nice spread of performance across the deciles of exam performance, ranging from 63% among low performers to 95% of high performers. That’s a question with useful discrimination for an exam like the USMLE.

Still, anyone who’s taken Step 1 knows that some questions will be much harder, and that fewer than 82% of examinees will answer correctly. If we conservatively assume that there are only a few of these “hard questions” on the exam, then we might estimate that the average Step 1 taker is probably getting around ~75% of questions right. (It’s hard to make a convincing argument that the average examinee could possibly be scoring much higher. And in fact, one of few studies that mentions this issue actually reports that the mean item difficulty was 76%.)

The minimum passing standard has to be lower than the average performance – so let’s ballpark that to be around 65%. (Bear in mind, this is just an estimate – and I think, a reasonably conservative one. But you can run the calculations with lower or higher percentages if you want. The final numbers I show below won’t be that much different than yours unless you use numbers that are implausible.)

Everyone still with me? Great.

Now, if a minimally competent examinee has to answer 65% of questions right to pass, then we have only 35% the of the ~252 scorable questions available to assign scores among all of the examinees with more than minimal competence.

In other words, we’re left with somewhere ~85 questions to help us assign scores in the passing range.

The current minimum passing score for Step 1 is 194. And while the maximum score is 300 in theory, the real world distribution goes up to around 275.

Think about that. We have ~85 questions to determine scores over around an 81 point range. That’s approximately one point per question.

Folks, this is what drives #Step1Mania.

Note, however, that the majority of Step 1 scores for U.S./Canadian students fall across a thirty point range from 220 to 250.

That means that, despite the power we give to USMLE Step 1 in residency selection, the absolute performance for most applicants is similar. In terms of raw number of questions answered, most U.S. medical student differ by fewer than 30 correctly-answered multiple choice questions. That’s around 10% of a seven hour, 280 question test administered on a single day.

And what important topics might those 30 questions test? Well, I’ve discussed that in the past.

Learning Objective: In terms of raw performance, most U.S. medical students likely differ by 30 or fewer correctly-answered questions on USMLE Step 1 (~10% of a 280 question test).

Question 5

A U.S. medical student takes USMLE Step 1. Her score is 191. Because the passing score is 194, she cannot seek licensure.

Which of the following reflects the probability that this examinee will pass the test if she takes it again?

A) 0%

B) 32%

C) 64%

D) 96%

–

The correct answer is C, 64%.

In 2016, 96% of first-time test takers from U.S. allopathic medical schools passed Step 1. For those who repeated the test, the pass rate was 64%. What that means is that >98% of U.S. allopathic medical students ultimately pass the exam.

I bring this up to highlight again how the Step 1 score is an estimate of knowledge at a specific point in time. And yet, we often treat Step 1 scores as if they are an immutable personality characteristic – a medical IQ, stamped on our foreheads for posterity.

But medical knowledge changes over time. I took Step 1 in 2005. If I took the test today, I would absolutely score lower than I did back then. I might even fail the test altogether.

But here’s the thing: which version of me would you want caring for your child? The 2005 version or the 2019 version?

The more I’ve thought about it, the stranger it seems that we even use this test for licensure (let alone residency selection). After all, if our goal is to evaluate competency for medical practice, shouldn’t a doctor in practice be able to pass the exam? I mean, if we gave a test of basketball competency to an NBA veteran, wouldn’t he do better than a player just starting his career? If we gave a test of musical competency to a concert pianist with a decade of professional experience, shouldn’t she score higher than a novice?

If we accept that the facts tested on Step 1 are essential for the safe and effective practice of medicine, is there really a practical difference between an examinee who doesn’t know these facts initially and one who knew them once but forgets them over time? If the exam truly tests competency, aren’t both of these examinees equally incompetent?

We have made the Step 1 score into the biggest false god in medical education.

By itself, Step 1 is neither good nor bad. It’s just a multiple choice test of medically-oriented basic science facts. It measures something – and if we appropriately interpret the measurement in context with the test’s content and limitations, it may provide some useful information, just like any other test might.

It’s our idolatry of the test that is harmful. We pretend that the test measures things that it doesn’t – because it makes life easier to do so. After all, it’s hard to thin a giant pile of residency applications with nuance and confidence intervals. An applicant with a 235 may be no better (or even, no different) than an applicant with a 230 – but by God, a 235 is higher.

It’s well beyond time to critically appraise this kind of idol worship. Whether you support a pass/fail Step 1 or not, let’s at least commit to sensible use of psychometric instruments.

Learning Objective: A Step 1 score is a measurement of knowledge at a specific point in time. But knowledge changes over time.

Score Report

So how’d you do?

I realize that some readers may support a pass/fail Step 1, while others may want to maintain a scored test. So to be sure everyone receives results of this test in their preferred format, I made a score report for both groups.

NUMERIC SCORE

Just like the real test, each question above is worth 1 point. And while some of you may say it’s non-evidence based, this is my test, and I say that one point differences in performance allow me to make broad and sweeping categorizations about you.

1 POINT – UNMATCHED

But thanks for playing. Good luck in the SOAP!

2 POINTS – ELIGIBLE FOR LICENSURE

Nice job. You’ve got what it takes to be licensed. (Or at least, you did on a particular day.)

3 POINTS – INTERVIEW OFFER!

Sure, the content of these questions may have essentially nothing to do with your chosen discipline, but your solid performance got your foot in the door. Good work.

4 POINTS – HUSAIN SATTAR, M.D.

You’re not just a high scorer – you’re a hero and a legend.

5 POINTS – NBME EXECUTIVE

Wow! You’re a USMLE expert. You should celebrate your outstanding performance with some $45 tequila shots while dancing at eye-level with the city skyline.

PASS/FAIL

FAIL

You regard USMLE Step 1 scores with a kind of magical thinking. They are not simply a one-time point estimate of basic science knowledge, or a tool that can somewhat usefully be applied to thin a pile of residency applications. Nay, they are a robust and reproducible glimpse into the very being of a physician, a perfectly predictive vocational aptitude test that is beyond reproach or criticism.

PASS

You realize that, whatever Step 1 measures, it is a rather imprecise in measuring that thing. You further appreciate that, when Step 1 scores are used for whatever purpose, there are certain practical and theoretical limitations on their utility. You understand – in real terms – what a Step 1 score really means.

(I only hope that the pass rate for this exam is as high as the real Step 1 pass rate.)

Dr. Carmody is a pediatric nephrologist and medical educator at Eastern Virginia Medical School. This post originally appeared on The Sheriff of Sodium here.

Another MCQ Test on the USMLE published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

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lauramalchowblog · 5 years ago

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Another MCQ Test on the USMLE

By BRYAN CARMODY, MD

Hey, I’m not pointing fingers. Six months ago, I thought I knew all that I needed to know about the USMLE, too – just because I’d taken the exams in the past.

But I’ve learned a lot about the USMLE since then, and in the interest of helping you interpret Step 1 scores in an evidence-based manner, I’d like to share some of that with you here.

However…

Question 1

Which of the following represents the 95% confidence interval for the examinee’s repeat score, assuming the repeat test has different questions but covers similar content?

A) 239-241

B) 237-243

C) 234-246

D) 228-252

The correct answer is D, 228-252.

No estimate is perfectly precise. But that’s what the USMLE (or any other test) gives us: a point estimate of the test-taker’s true knowledge.

So how precise is that estimate? That is, if we let an examinee take the test over and over, how closely would the scores cluster?

To answer that question, we need to know the standard error of measurement (SEM) for the test.

So what’s the SEM for Step 1? According to the USMLE’s Score Interpretation Guidelines, the SEM for the USMLE is 6 points.

Think about that range for a moment.

(To their credit, the NBME began reporting a confidence interval to examinees with the 2019 update to the USMLE score report.)

Learning Objective: Step 1 scores are not perfectly precise measures of knowledge – and that imprecision should be considered when interpreting their values.

Question 2

230 vs. 235

232 vs. 242

234 vs. 249

For how many of these candidate pairs can the program director conclude that there is a statistical difference in knowledge between the applicants?

A) Pairs 1, 2, and 3

B) Pairs 2 and 3

C) Pair 3 only

D) None of the above

–

The correct answer is D, none of the above.

We can answer this by using the standard error of difference (SED). When the two samples are >/= 2 SED apart, then we can be confident that there is a statistical difference between those samples.

So what’s the SED for Step 1? Again, according to the USMLE’s statisticians, it’s 8 points.

That means that, for us to have 95% confidence that two candidates really have a difference in knowledge, their Step 1 scores must be 16 or more points apart.

Learning Objective: To confidently conclude that two students’ Step 1 scores really reflect a difference in knowledge, they must be >/= 16 points apart.

Question 3

A) 205

B) 225

C) 245

D) 265

–

The correct answer is B, 225.

Sigh.

I hear this kind of claim all the time on Twitter. So once and for all, let’s separate fact from fiction.

FACT: Step 1 scores for U.S. medical students score are rising.

See the graphic below.

FICTION: The rise in scores reflects a change in the test or the way it’s scored.

Just how far the distribution has already shifted is impressive.

When the USMLE began in the early 1990s, a score of 200 was a perfectly respectable score. Matter of fact, it put you exactly at the mean for U.S. medical students.

Know what a score of 200 gets you today?

A score in the 9th percentile, and screened out of almost any residency program that uses cut scores. (And nearly two-thirds of all programs do.)

Learning Objective: Step 1 scores are rising – not because of a change in test scoring, but because of honest-to-God higher performance.

Question 4

Two medical students take USMLE Step 1. One scores a 220 and is screened out of his preferred residency program. The other scores a 250 and is invited for an interview.

Which of the following represents the most likely absolute difference in correctly-answered test items for this pair of examinees?

A) 5

B) 30

C) 60

D) 110

The correct answer is B, 30.

How many questions do you have to answer correctly to pass USMLE Step 1? What percentage do you have to get right to score a 250, or a 270? We don’t know.

First, we need to briefly review how the minimum passing score for the USMLE is set, using a modified Angoff procedure.

Here’s an example of what Angoff data look like (the slide is from a recent lecture).

So how many questions do we have to assign scores to examinees who pass USMLE Step 1?

Well, Step 1 includes 7 sections with up to 40 questions in each. So there are a maximum of 280 questions on the exam.

If we take away the 10% of items that are experimental, then we have at most 252 questions to score.

How many of these questions must be answered correctly to pass? Here, we have to use common sense to make a ballpark estimate.

Everyone still with me? Great.

In other words, we’re left with somewhere ~85 questions to help us assign scores in the passing range.

The current minimum passing score for Step 1 is 194. And while the maximum score is 300 in theory, the real world distribution goes up to around 275.

Think about that. We have ~85 questions to determine scores over around an 81 point range. That’s approximately one point per question.

Folks, this is what drives #Step1Mania.

Note, however, that the majority of Step 1 scores for U.S./Canadian students fall across a thirty point range from 220 to 250.

And what important topics might those 30 questions test? Well, I’ve discussed that in the past.

Learning Objective: In terms of raw performance, most U.S. medical students likely differ by 30 or fewer correctly-answered questions on USMLE Step 1 (~10% of a 280 question test).

Question 5

A U.S. medical student takes USMLE Step 1. Her score is 191. Because the passing score is 194, she cannot seek licensure.

Which of the following reflects the probability that this examinee will pass the test if she takes it again?

A) 0%

B) 32%

C) 64%

D) 96%

–

The correct answer is C, 64%.

But medical knowledge changes over time. I took Step 1 in 2005. If I took the test today, I would absolutely score lower than I did back then. I might even fail the test altogether.

But here’s the thing: which version of me would you want caring for your child? The 2005 version or the 2019 version?

We have made the Step 1 score into the biggest false god in medical education.

By itself, Step 1 is neither good nor bad. It��s just a multiple choice test of medically-oriented basic science facts. It measures something – and if we appropriately interpret the measurement in context with the test’s content and limitations, it may provide some useful information, just like any other test might.

It’s well beyond time to critically appraise this kind of idol worship. Whether you support a pass/fail Step 1 or not, let’s at least commit to sensible use of psychometric instruments.

Learning Objective: A Step 1 score is a measurement of knowledge at a specific point in time. But knowledge changes over time.

Score Report

So how’d you do?

NUMERIC SCORE

1 POINT – UNMATCHED

But thanks for playing. Good luck in the SOAP!

2 POINTS – ELIGIBLE FOR LICENSURE

Nice job. You’ve got what it takes to be licensed. (Or at least, you did on a particular day.)

3 POINTS – INTERVIEW OFFER!

Sure, the content of these questions may have essentially nothing to do with your chosen discipline, but your solid performance got your foot in the door. Good work.

4 POINTS – HUSAIN SATTAR, M.D.

You’re not just a high scorer – you’re a hero and a legend.

5 POINTS – NBME EXECUTIVE

Wow! You’re a USMLE expert. You should celebrate your outstanding performance with some $45 tequila shots while dancing at eye-level with the city skyline.

PASS/FAIL

FAIL

PASS

(I only hope that the pass rate for this exam is as high as the real Step 1 pass rate.)

Dr. Carmody is a pediatric nephrologist and medical educator at Eastern Virginia Medical School. This post originally appeared on The Sheriff of Sodium here.

Another MCQ Test on the USMLE published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

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trentteti · 5 years ago

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Applying to Law School with a High GPA and Low LSAT Score

Are you applying to law school as a splitter? A reverse-splitter? Super-splitter? Or are you just totally confused right now?

A “splitter” is a just a euphemism for someone with a significantly higher LSAT score than GPA, while a “reverse-splitter” is the opposite, with a higher relative GPA than LSAT score, with the two scores being separated by at least a quartile based on a school’s admissions profile. “Super-splitters” are those applicants whose divergence between the two scores is extremely pronounced, separated by at least two quartiles. For example, if the school you’re applying to has a GPA split of 3.5 as its 25th percentile, 3.75 for its median, and 3.9 for its 75th percentile, with LSAT splits of 162 for its 25th percentile, 166 for its 50th percentile, and 170 for its 75th percentile, someone with a 171 LSAT and 3.6 GPA would be a splitter, while someone with a 3.2 GPA and 175 LSAT would be a super-splitter.

As we talked about splitters a few months ago, we’ll be discussing the reverse-splitters today. The best news about being a reverse-splitter is that it’s a situation that can be remedied. While your GPA is already set (unless you’re taking the LSAT really early in college), the LSAT score is something that can go up, and schools generally only care about your best score. So the best remedy for the reverse-splitter is to go out and get a better LSAT score with the best prep you can get. There are LSAT prep online courses as well that can help increase your LSAT score.

But what if you’re determined to apply with the score you’ve got? The first step is to target the schools that are reverse-splitter friendly. Many schools put a premium on both LSAT and GPA, but some have disparities one way or the other that you can use to your advantage. Do your research and make sure you have a solid shot before wasting valuable time and money applying to a school that will reject you based on numbers alone. Being a reverse-splitter will require some extra work to explain the situation to the admissions department, and it’s always best to give each school an application tailored to that school. Most importantly, make sure your application is as good as it can be (outside of that pesky LSAT). Work with your references to fine-tune their letters of recommendation, get as much experience as possible in legal and leadership positions, and anything else that would fit into the values that your target schools extol.

An addendum explaining why the discrepancy exists is also a must.This is separate from and complementary to a personal statement, but functions as an extension of that personal statement, allowing you to explain away any weaknesses in your application. Highlight your strengths while carefully explaining why the low LSAT score isn’t reflective of your abilities; if possible, do this by tying your personal situation to the school you are applying to. Maybe you’ve always struggled with standardized tests, or English is your second language and that makes it difficult to finish the sections in time. If the schools place an emphasis on diverse experiences, highlight why your unique experiences would enrich the student body; if they seem to value overcoming adversity in their marketing materials, emphasize how much adversity you’ve overcome, including the LSAT.

Lastly, and this applies to all admissions/job interviews/life in general, schmooze. Go to the school and do your best to convince everyone there how awesome you are and what a mistake it would be to reject you based on one lousy test score. This isn’t guaranteed to work — I had one student tell me a top-ranked public school absolutely loved her but couldn’t admit her based on her LSAT score being out of their range — but it can’t hurt. And I’ve also heard plenty of stories of reverse-splitters being admitted to some top schools despite relatively low LSAT scores, but based on other factors (being ex-military, for example, is a huge bonus as an applicant). So leverage every advantage you have, and don’t be defeatist about a low LSAT score.

Still, the ideal situation is to bring your LSAT score in line with or above your GPA. In the long run, nothing correlates better with starting salaries out of law school than LSAT score, and law schools still generally care more about the LSAT than GPA (although exceptions may exist). It’s always better to write an addendum explaining why you were able to improve your score so much between the first and second LSAT sittings than one explaining why your best score is so low. There’s always time to get it up, and it’s absolutely worth making the effort to do so. And if you need any help getting that score up, we can help you figure out where you need the most help.

Applying to Law School with a High GPA and Low LSAT Score was originally published on Blueprint LSAT Blog

#admissions #applications #gpa #LSAT #trent teti #lsat

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suzanneshannon · 5 years ago

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How Google PageSpeed Works: Improve Your Score and Search Engine Ranking

This article is from my friend Ben who runs Calibre, a tool for monitoring the performance of websites. We use Calibre here on CSS-Tricks to keep an eye on things. In fact, I just popped over there to take a look and was notified of some little mistakes that slipped by, and I fixed them. Recommended!

In this article, we uncover how PageSpeed calculates it’s critical speed score.

It’s no secret that speed has become a crucial factor in increasing revenue and lowering abandonment rates. Now that Google uses page speed as a ranking factor, many organizations have become laser-focused on performance.

Last year, Google made two significant changes to their search indexing and ranking algorithms:

In March, indexing became based on the mobile version of a page, rather than desktop.

In July, the SEO ranking algorithm was updated to include page speed as a ranking factor for both mobile pages and ads.

From this, we’re able to state two truths:

The speed of your site on mobile will affect your overall SEO ranking.

If your pages load slowly, it will reduce your ad quality score, and ads will cost more.

Google wrote:

Faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.

To understand how these changes affect us from a performance perspective, we need to grasp the underlying technology. PageSpeed 5.0 is a complete overhaul of previous editions. It’s now being powered by Lighthouse and CrUX (Chrome User Experience Report).

This upgrade also brings a new scoring algorithm that makes it far more challenging to receive a high PageSpeed score.

What changed in PageSpeed 5.0?

Before 5.0, PageSpeed ran a series of heuristics against a given page. If the page has large, uncompressed images, PageSpeed would suggest image compression. Cache-Headers missing? Add them.

These heuristics were coupled with a set of guidelines that would likely result in better performance, if followed, but were merely superficial and didn’t actually analyze the load and render experience that real visitors face.

In PageSpeed 5.0, pages are loaded in a real Chrome browser that is controlled by Lighthouse. Lighthouse records metrics from the browser, applies a scoring model to them, and presents an overall performance score. Guidelines for improvement are suggested based on how specific metrics score.

Like PageSpeed, Lighthouse also has a performance score. In PageSpeed 5.0, the performance score is taken from Lighthouse directly. PageSpeed’s speed score is now the same as Lighthouse’s Performance score.

Now that we know where the PageSpeed score comes from, let’s dive into how it’s calculated, and how we can make meaningful improvements.

What is Google Lighthouse?

Lighthouse is an open source project run by a dedicated team from Google Chrome. Over the past couple of years, it has become the go-to free performance analysis tool.

Lighthouse uses Chrome’s Remote Debugging Protocol to read network request information, measure JavaScript performance, observe accessibility standards and measure user-focused timing metrics like First Contentful Paint, Time to Interactive or Speed Index.

If you’re interested in a high-level overview of Lighthouse architecture, read this guide from the official repository.

How Lighthouse calculates the Performance Score

During performance tests, Lighthouse records many metrics focused on what a user sees and experiences. There are six metrics used to create the overall performance score. They are:

Time to Interactive (TTI)

Speed Index

First Contentful Paint (FCP)

First CPU Idle

First Meaningful Paint (FMP)

Estimated Input Latency

Lighthouse will apply a 0 – 100 scoring model to each of these metrics. This process works by obtaining mobile 75th and 95th percentiles from HTTP Archive, then applying a log normal function.

Following the algorithm and reference data used to calculate Time to Interactive, we can see that if a page managed to become "interactive" in 2.1 seconds, the Time to Interactive metric score would be 92/100.

Once each metric is scored, it’s assigned a weighting which is used as a modifier in calculating the overall performance score. The weightings are as follows:

Metric Weighting Time to Interactive (TTI) 5 Speed Index 4 First Contentful Paint 3 First CPU Idle 2 First Meaningful Paint 1 Estimated Input Latency 0

These weightings refer to the impact of each metric in regards to mobile user experience.

In the future, this may also be enhanced by the inclusion of user-observed data from the Chrome User Experience Report dataset.

You may be wondering how the weighting of each metric affects the overall performance score. The Lighthouse team have created a useful Google Spreadsheet calculator explaining this process:

Using the example above, if we change (time to) interactive from 5 seconds to 17 seconds (the global average mobile TTI), our score drops to 56% (aka 56 out of 100).

Whereas, if we change First Contentful Paint to 17 seconds, we’d score 62%.

TTI is the most impactful metric to your performance score. Therefore, to receive a high PageSpeed score, you will need a speedy TTI measurement.

Moving the needle on TTI

At a high level, there are two significant factors that hugely influence TTI:

The amount of JavaScript delivered to the page

The run time of JavaScript tasks on the main thread

Our Time to Interactive guide explains how TTI works in great detail, but if you’re looking for some quick no-research wins, we’d suggest: Reducing the amount of JavaScript

Where possible, remove unused JavaScript code or focus on only delivering a script that will be run by the current page. That might mean removing old polyfills or replacing third-party libraries with smaller, more modern alternatives.

It’s important to remember that the cost of JavaScript is not only the time it takes to download it. The browser needs to decompress, parse, compile and eventually execute it, which takes non-trivial time, especially in mobile devices.

Effective measures for reducing the amount of scripts from your pages include:

Reviewing and removing polyfills that are no longer required for your audience.

Understanding the cost of each third-party JavaScript library. Use webpack-bundle-analyser or source-map-explorer to visualise the how large each library is.

Modern JavaScript tooling (like webpack) can break-up large JavaScript applications into a series of small bundles that are automatically loaded as a user navigates. This approach is known as code splitting and is extremely effective in improving TTI.

Service workers that will cache the bytecode result of a parsed and compiled script. If you’re able to make use of this, visitors will pay a one-time performance cost for parse and compilation. After that, it’ll be mitigated by cache.

Monitoring Time to Interactive

To successfully uncover significant differences in user experience, we suggest using a performance monitoring system (like Calibre!) that allows for testing a minimum of two devices; a fast desktop and a low-mid range mobile phone.

That way, you’ll have the data for both the best and worst case of what your customers experience. It’s time to come to terms that your customers aren’t using the same powerful hardware as you.

In-depth manual profiling

To get the best results in profiling JavaScript performance, test pages using intentionally slow mobile devices. If you have an old phone in a desk drawer, this is a great second-life for it.

An excellent substitute for using a real device is to use Chrome DevTools hardware emulation mode. We’ve written an extensive performance profiling guide to help you get started with runtime performance.

What about the other metrics?

Speed Index, First Contentful Paint and First Meaningful Paint are all browser-paint-based metrics. They’re influenced by similar factors and can often be improved at the same time.

It’s objectively easier to improve these metrics as they are calculated by how quickly a page renders. Following the Lighthouse Performance audit rules closely will result in these metrics improving.

If you aren’t already preloading your fonts or optimizing for critical requests, that is an excellent place to start a performance journey. Our article titled "The Critical Request" explains in great detail how the browser fetches and renders critical resources used to render your pages.

Tracking your progress and making meaningful improvements

Google's newly updated search console, Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights, are a great way to get initial visibility into the performance of your pages but fall short for teams that need to continuously track and improve the performance of their pages.

Continuous performance monitoring is essential to ensuring speed improvements last, and teams get instantly notified when regressions happen. Manual testing introduces unexpected variability in results and makes testing from different regions as well as on various devices nearly impossible without a dedicated lab environment.

Speed has become a crucial factor for SEO rankings, especially now that nearly 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices.

To avoid losing your search positioning, ensure you're using an up-to-date performance suite to track key pages. (Pssst, we built Calibre to be your performance companion. It has Lighthouse built-in. Hundreds of teams from around the globe are using it every day.)

About Time to Interactive

How to optimize the performance of a JavaScript application

Lighthouse performance score calculator

The post How Google PageSpeed Works: Improve Your Score and Search Engine Ranking appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

How Google PageSpeed Works: Improve Your Score and Search Engine Ranking published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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awesomeexampapers-blog · 5 years ago

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MAT 144 All Weeks Discussions and Assignments Entire Course

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GC MAT144 Week 1 Discussion 1 & 2 dq 1 Choose one country that you might visit during your mission trip for the course project. Select a duration for your trip between two and six weeks, and then choose a number of participants between 5 and 10 people. Suppose one goal of your group is to speak to every adult citizen in the country. How many citizens must each missionary need to talk to per day, per hour, and per second to speak to every adult citizen in that country? Is that goal reasonable? dq 2 A deductive argument is valid if the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. It is sound if it is valid and the premises are true. Pick three of the following arguments and clearly explain why each argument is or is not valid or sound. 1. No human lives in outer space. Susie lives in outer space. Thus, Susie is not human. 2. All birds can fly. Ostriches are birds. Therefore, ostriches can fly. 3. All jobs are easy. Walking is not a job. Hence, walking is not easy. 4. When it rains, it snows. It is snowing. Therefore, it is raining. 5. No dog is a cat. Billy is a cat. Thus, Billy is not a dog. 6. If someone is a medical doctor, they are smart. Dr. Oz is a medical doctor. So, Dr. Oz is smart. 7. Whichever candidate receives the greatest share of the popular vote is elected President of the United States. Al Gore received more votes than George Bush. Therefore, Al Gore was elected President of the United States. MAT144 Week 2 Discussion dq 1 From the Course Materials, click the link to The World Factbook on the CIA website to find the current population and growth rate for a country of your choice. Use the population growth model below to predict the population of the country 1 year from now, 10 years from now, 100 years from now, and 1000 years from now. Are all of these predictions appropriate? Why? Use the model P(t) = P0(1+r)twhere P0= current population r = the population growth rate t = time in years from now P(t) = population t years from now dq 2 In DQ 1, you predicted the population 10 years from now for the country you chose. Now calculate another projection of the population for 10 years from now and add 1% to the growth rate. Did the new 10-year population projection also increase by 1%? What do your findings signify? MAT144 Week 3 Discussion dq 1 What is percent? Write the formula for percent increase. Write your height in inches. Suppose it increases by 15%, what would your new height be? dq 2 Choose two of the following statements and determine whether each makes sense. Support your reasoning with calculations. 1. I have $100 and my restaurant bill comes to $81, which is not enough to leave a 20% tip. 2. I found the percent decrease in a jacket’s price to be 120%. 3. My weight increased by 2% in January. My new weight decreased by 2% in February, so I am back at my original weight. 4. My rent increased from 20% to 30% of my monthly income, so the percent increase in my monthly rent check is 10%. 5. At a clearance sale, the price of a pair of boots is half off the original price. I also have a coupon for half off the clearance price. If I use this coupon, I can get the pair of boots free. 6. The final price after tax of a stereo is $110.00. The tax rate was 10%. $110-$110*.10 = $99, so the price before tax was $99. 7. I bought a jacket that was first marked down by 20% and then was reduced another 30%. Therefore, I saved 50% on the jacket! 8. A population of mites increased fourfold in four days. This means the population doubled in two days. MAT144 Week 4 Discussion dq 1 Use the digits of your birthday as the amount of your initial investment (i.e., 6/25 is $625), calculate the value of this investment after 10 years at 3.5% APR for interest compounded yearly, quarterly, monthly, and daily. What do you notice? dq 2 Choose two of the following statements and determine whether each makes sense. Support your reasoning with calculations. 1. Assuming that a 3-year car loan has a lower interest rate than a 5-year loan, people should always select the 3-year loan. 2. After depositing $1,500 in an account with an APR of 4%, my balance at the end of the first year was $(1,500)*(1.04). 3. I have $1,000 to invest. One account will pay 5% interest the first year and 10% interest the second year. Another account will pay 10% interest the first year and 5% interest the second year. It does not matter which account I choose, because I will end up with the same amount of money either way. 4. I can put away $1,000 towards retirement today or $1,000 ten years from now. Either way I have invested the same amount so I will end up with the same amount when I retire in 25 years. 5. I like to keep all my money, so I pay only the minimum required payment on my credit card. 6. If I can afford to pay for a car out of pocket, I should still take out a loan and make only the monthly minimum payments. That way, the money in my savings account will continue to grow. 7. Bank A compounds interest once a month, and has no charge for a checking account. Bank B compounds interest every day, but there is a $2/month charge for a checking account. Both banks yield 1.2% APR. Bank A is always the best deal. 8. If it takes 20 years for a $100 dollar investment to double in value at a certain bank, then it should also take 20 years for a $500 investment to double in value. MAT144 Week 4 Mission Project: Part B Peer Review Forum Please follow these steps: 1. Begin by posting a draft of Mission Project: Part B by the Wednesday, Day 3 of Topic 4 to the Project Peer Review Forum. 2. Next, review the project of the person who posted his/her response directly below yours in the Peer Review forum. If your draft is the last posted, review the first draft posted. Then, complete the “Peer Review Worksheet” (see attachment). 3. You will then need to post your completed Peer Review Worksheet to TWO places: to the Mission Project B: Peer Review Forum for your peer to view, as well as to the Mission Project B: Peer Review assignment box, so the instructor can grade your work by Friday, Day 5 of Topic 4. 4. Attach the file with your completed Peer Review Worksheet to the Project Peer Review Forum as a “reply” to the initial post of your peer’s first draft. 5. Please note that to participate in the peer review process you must post the rough draft of Mission Project: Part B essay by 11:59 pm (AZ time) Wednesday, Day 3 of Topic 4. If you do not submit the Rough Draft or Peer Review Worksheet to both places or if you review the wrong person, you may not receive full credit for this assignment. MAT144 Week 5 Discussion dq 1 Take two distinct die that you can easily distinguish from one another or use an online virtual dice roller such as https://www.random.org/dice/. Identify one as Die 1 and the other as Die 2. Using the spreadsheet provided by your instructor, record the results of 20 rolls of the dice. Input the results of each roll for Die 1 and the sum of Die 1 and Die 2 on the spreadsheet to make a scatterplot of the results. Do you think that these two variables are strongly or weakly correlated? Should the correlation be positive or negative? Does the scatter plot agree with your intuition? dq 2 Suppose you want to determine the typical income of a full time worker in America. Describe how you would sample the population without creating a bias in your sample and justify your reasoning. MAT144 Week 6 Discussion dq 1 Roll two dice and add the numbers. Roll the dice 20 times and record your results. Compute the mean, median, and mode for your data set. Now, replace one of your results with 100. Calculate the mean, median, and mode for this new data set. How did these change? dq 2 According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the mean height of an American male is 69.3 inches and the mean height of an American female is 63.8 inches. The standard deviation for both genders is 2.7 inches. Assume height is approximately normal for each gender. Calculate your z-score within your gender. Find your percentile using Table 6.3 on page 396 of your text. What percent of your gender is shorter than you are? What percent is taller than you? MAT144 Week 7 Discussion dq 1 A friend invites you to play a game of chance that costs you $1 every time to play. You get to pick one card. You win if you pick the ace of spades. Otherwise, you lose. The amount that you win will be $(40 + the day of your birth). Example: If you were born on the fourth of July, you would win 40+4 = $44. What is the expected value of the amount you will win from each turn? Would it be a good idea to play this game only one time? Would it be a good idea to play 1,000 times? dq 2 Every license plate consists of numbers and letters. What is the license plate on your personal vehicle or some random vehicle in your state? Determine how many possible license plates could be manufactured using the pattern of numbers and letters on this license plate. MAT144 Week 1 Assignment Details: Refer to MathXL Student Instructions and Online Student Help, located on the Tools for Success page in the Student Success Center, for information on how to access and use MathXL. If you are not already familiar with the use of MathXL, spend some time navigating in your MathXL course and complete the MathXL orientation assignment. MAT144 Week 2 Assignment Details: Imagine that you are planning to conduct a mission trip in 5 years. Refer to the attached resource MAT-144 Mission Trip: Part A for complete assignment instructions. Include three or more scholarly resources, including the textbook and The World Factbook. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guides and Templates, located in the Student Success Center. This assignment uses a rubric. Review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center. MAT-144 Mission Project: Part A Use the following resource to assist you in completing Part A of your Mission Trip assignment. Imagine that you are planning to conduct a mission trip in 5 years. You should select a specific mission for this project to provide some kind of humanitarian aid to the target population. Many people choose to include evangelism as a part of their mission, though the main goal must be humanitarian. The mission goal may include providing education, medical assistance, clean water, food, or aid. To keep your mission reasonable, in scale and goal, design your mission to include yourself and 5 – 10 other participants and to be 2 – 4 weeks in duration. Because the mission group is small and the duration is not long, consider goals that can reasonably be accomplished within the allotted time. Choose a small target population for your mission. For example, if you want to bring medicine to two small villages in Peru,the villagers are your target population. It is not reasonable to try to bring medicine to the entire population of Peru with a small group of missionaries on a month long trip. Choose three countries from the Country Data Spreadsheet providedin the Course Materials thatyou would consider going to for your mission trip. Research each country using The World Factbook found on the Central Intelligence Agency website at.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/”>https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/, other resources such as the U.S. Department of State website at.state.gov/content/travel/english.html”>http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/english.html, and the GCU Library. Consider economic reasons for choosing these countries, and safety concerns that may be relevant to these countries and your mission goals. Remember that you would not go aloneon this trip and you are responsible for the safety of the other participants, in addition to your own. Write a 400–600 word narrative describing your mission and why the three chosen countries are appropriate for your mission.Specifically, address the following in your assignment: 1) What is the purpose of your mission trip? In general, mission trips fall into three categories – providing aid in the form of supplies, providing education, and providing services such as medical clinics and building houses. 2) What is the target population? How does it compare with the entire population and what will it look like in 5 years? This will require use of the population information available from The World Factbook in conjunction with the information in Chapter 8 and Chapter9 of the text. You are required to discuss your target population andits projected size in 5 years. This material is covered on pp. 480 – 483. Assume that the annual growth rate of the target population is the same as that of the country’s total population growth rate and that it will remain consistent at the most recent rate available. Show your work for all calculations using the Equation Editor inMicrosoft Word. Example: Suppose you have $39,815.00invested at 8% APR over 5 years and the interest is compounded once per year. The formula for the final value of your investment from p. 216of your textbook gives This is how your math should be formatted. See Part B instructions for other examples. While this is a fun project, the goal is to assess the mathematics you are learning, so you must include your calculations, make sure they are correct and clearly written. 3) What are the economic reasons for choosing these countries? Use economic information you find in The World Factbook and other resources. 4) Why are the countries you chose are good candidates for a mission trip? 5) What are possible safety concerns that might arise in conjunction with your trip? Conduct additional research as necessary to address this concern. The U.S. State Department website is one source of information. 6) Include a paragraph in which you decide which one of the three countries to choose to complete the mission. Apply logical reasoning to make your choice. The logic you use in making these decisions must be clearly explained.Explain why that country is a more appropriate candidate than the other two countries. Include three or more scholarly resources, including the textbook and The World Factbook. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guides and Templates, located in the Student Success Center. This assignment uses a rubric. Review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center. MAT144 Week 4 Mission Project: Part B Peer Review Assignment Details: Please follow these steps: 1. Begin by posting a rough draft of your project by the deadline to the Mission Project: Part B Peer Review Forum by Wednesday, Day 3 of Topic 4. 2. Next, review the project of the person who posted his/her response directly below yours in the Peer Review forum. If your draft is the last posted, review the first draft posted. Then, complete the “Peer Review Worksheet” (see attachment). 3. You will then need to post your completed Peer Review Worksheet to TWO places: to the Mission Project: Part B Peer Review Forum for your peer to review, as well as to the Mission Project: Part B Peer Review assignment box, so the instructor can grade your work by Friday, Day 5 of Topic 4. 4. Attach the file with your completed Peer Review Worksheet to the Mission Project: Part B Peer Review Forum as a “reply” to the initial post of your peer’s first draft. 5. Please note that to participate in the peer review process you must post the rough draft of your Mission Project: Part B essay by 11:59 pm (AZ time) on Wednesday, Day 3 of Topic 4. If you do not submit the Rough Draft or Peer Review Worksheet to both places or if you review the wrong person, you may not receive full credit for this assignment. MAT-144Peer Review Worksheet For ground students: review two students one time, online:review one student one time. Part of your responsibility as a student in this course is to provide quality feedback to your peers that will help them to improve their writing skills. This worksheet will help you practice providing that feedback. Author’s name: Peer reviewer’s name: Reviewer After reading through the draft, write a summary (three to five sentences)of the paper that includes your assessment of how well the essay meets the assignment requirements as specified in the syllabus and the rubric. Summary: Considereach of the following questions as you review the paper. Please be sure to indicate at least three positive aspects of the draft and at least three areas for improvement in reply to the questions at the bottom of this worksheet. Positive answers will give you specific elements of the draft to praise; negative answers will indicate areas in need of improvement and revision. ReviewContent and Ideas How effectively does the essayidentify the main points that the writer would like to make? Is the logic the writer used to establish the content written in the paper clear? Does the writer use examples and concepts from the text to support his or her decision? How effectively does the essay’s content support the overall goal of the paper? Organization How effectively does the introduction engage the reader while providing an overview of the paper? How effectively do the paragraphs develop the topic sentence and advance the essay’s ideas? How effectively does the conclusion provide a strong, satisfying ending, not a mere summary of the essay? Format How closely does the paper follow GCU formatting style?Is it double-spaced in 12 pt. Times New Roman font?Does it have 1″ margins? Does it use headers (page numbers using appropriate header function)?Does it have a proper heading (with student’s name, date, course, and instructor’s name)? Are all information, quotations, and borrowed ideas cited in parenthetical GCU format? Are all sources listed on the references page in GCU format? Is the required minimum number of sources listed? Language Use and Style Are the voice and tone of the essay effective in characterizing ideas and creating the appropriate mood?If “No,” please provide examples of ineffective or inappropriate voice and tone. How effectively does the paper incorporate a variety of sentence structures that strengthen the ideas, create vitality, and avoid choppiness in the writing? How would you assess the writer’s diction (i.e., word choice)? Does the writer use active verbs, concrete nouns, and precise words? Grammar and Mechanics Does the writer use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling?If “No,” please provide examples of errors in need of correction. Is the writing clear and comprehensible throughout the draft?If “No,” please provide examples in need of improvement. Three things that I liked about your draft are: 1. 2. 3. Three things that could be improved are: 1. 2. 3. MAT144 Week 4 Mission Project: Part B Assignment Details: Continue with the country you selected in Mission Project: Part A. Refer to the resource Mission Project: Part B for complete assignment instructions. Include three or more scholarly resources. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guides and Templates, located in the Student Success Center. This assignment uses a rubric. Review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center. Note: You are required to post a rough draft of your Mission Project: Part B for peer review by Wednesday, Day 3 of Topic 4. Refer to the Mission Project: Part B Peer Review assignment for complete instructions on the peer review. MAT-144 Mission Project: Part B Use the following resource to assist you in completing Part B of your Mission Trip assignment. Adding to the paper you submitted for Part A of your project, develop a financial plan to fund your proposed mission project to that country. Write an additional 500–750-word narrative describing the country of your choice, the expenses you expect to incur for the trip, and how you will pay for those expenses. Your paper must include a budget in table format. Use the Budget Worksheet spreadsheet to assist you in creating your budget. Include the following in your paper: Provide reasonable estimates for the expenses that will be incurred during your trip and the sources used to create the estimates. These include at a minimum: transportation, supplies, food, and lodging. For any expenses that will be incurred outside the United States, you must provide the amounts in both U.S. dollars and the local currency. Use the current exchange rate, and be sure to cite and reference your source according to GCU style. Calculate several different ways to pay for your trip using the savings and loan information from Chapter 4 of your textbook, incorporating the following points into your plan. You already have 10% of the money needed for your trip, which begins in five years. You decide to invest that money at 4% APR compounded quarterly. Calculate out how much this will grow to by the start of your trip using the Compound Interest Formula from p. 216 of your textbook. A(t)=A_0 (1+r/N)^(N?t) Here A(t) = value of the account after t years, A_0= the initial investment, r= APR (written as a decimal), N= number of times compounded per year,t= number of year. A philanthropic company, Missions-R-Us, has agreed to give you $100 each month from now until the trip starts. This money will be invested in an account that earns 6% APR compounded monthly. Figure out how much this will amount to by the start of your trip using the Savings Plan Formula on p. 228 of your textbook. A(t)=(PMT?((1+r/N)^(N?t)-1))/((r/N) ) Here PMT= the monthly contributions, r= annual interest rate as a decimal, N= number of times compounded annually (12 – once per month), t= time of the loan in years, A(t)= value of account after t years. The remaining balance must be taken out as a loan. If the above will pay for your entire trip, you must still investigate these loan scenarios. You can consider taking out a $10,000 emergency fund at these rates. There are two banks willing to offer you a loan. Bank A will lend you a 5-year loan at 9% APR compounded monthly with monthly payments. Bank B will lend you a 10-year loan at 12% APR compounded monthly with monthly payments. Calculate the payment for each of these loans using Loan Payment Formula on p. 249 of your textbook and discuss the reasons for choosing one or the other. PMT=(P?(r/N))/(1-(1+r/N)^(-N?t) ) Here P= the initial loan amount, r= annual interest rate as a decimal, N= number of times compounded annually, t= time of the loan in years, PMT= your monthly payment Include all calculations, including the formulas used, formatted with the Equation Editor in Microsoft Word. If you use a spreadsheet to check your calculations, include the spreadsheet as a separate attachment. Include three or more scholarly resources. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guides and Templates, located in the Student Success Center. This assignment uses a rubric. Review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center. MAT144 Week 6 Mission Project: Part C Statistical Study Assignment Details: Refer to Mission Project: Part C Statistical Study Resource for complete assignment instructions. Complete Mission Project: Part C Worksheet using the included Part C Data spreadsheet first and then prepare your written report according to the instructions. Submit both the completed worksheet and written report to your instructor. Include two or more scholarly resources. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guides and Templates, located in the Student Success Center. This assignment uses a scoring guide. Review the scoring guide prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center. MAT-144 Mission Project: Part C Statistical Study Worksheet Answer the following based on the data presented in the included Part C Data spreadsheet. You will use the analysis you complete here to prepare a written report of your findings. Be sure to submit your written report and completed worksheet to your instructor. 1) Record the mean and median of each group of samples. a. Original sample collected by mission team i. Mean ii. Median b. Villager supplied sample i. Mean ii. Median c. Student biologist collected sample i. Mean ii. Median 2) Look at the box plots and histograms for each of the datasets. Record any differences you notice in the charts. Does it appear from the charts that the villagers have access to cleaner water after the mission? 3) The mission team wants to do a statistical test to support whether or not the villagers have access to cleaner water. State the null and alternative hypotheses that can be used to test the data. 4) The results of a statistical test to compare the means of the samples are shown on the spreadsheet. Determine if there is statistically significant evidence that the means are different at the ? = 0.05 level. MAT-144 Mission Project: Part C Statistical Study Use the following resource to assist you in completing Part C of your Mission Trip assignment. You will also use Mission Project: Part C Worksheet and Part C Data spreadsheet to complete this assignment. A friend of yours has recently come back from a mission trip. The mission team has collected some data. They need help analyzing this data and because you have just taken a math class and have been planning your own mission trip, your friend has asked you to help out. The purpose of the mission trip was to bring clean water to a village in Sierra Leone. When the group arrived they took a sample of water from each of 100 randomly selected households around the village. One of the trip participants is planning to major in biology, so she was put in charge of analyzing the number of microbes in each water sample.All of this group’s data can is found in the included spreadsheet. The group spent the next few weeks digging several wells around the village. The wells each produced clean water. However, the group was not sure whether the villagers would all use the wells to get all of their water or if they would continue to use their old water sources too. The group decided to take another sample of water from another 100 households one month after the wells were dug. To save time, they asked villagers to bring in samples of their water from home. They accepted the first 100 samples. The group’s aspiring biologist who analyzed the data was worried about the integrity of the water samples that the villagers brought in themselves. At the last minute, she decided to collect some samples herself. She only had time to collect 20 samples from random households. Analyze the data and record the results on the worksheet provided. You will use the results to write the report of your analysis of the data: Once you complete your statistical calculations, prepare a report of your findings. Write a 750-1,000-word report of your analysis of the data for the mission team.Include the following in your report: 1) Report why you think that either the mean or the median is a better measure of central tendency in this case.Is the best measure of central tendency the same for all three samples? 2) Discuss the differences that you noticed between the samples when you reviewed the box plot and histograms. 3) Identify the null and alternative hypotheses. 4) Discuss the results of the statistical test. Be sure to include discussion of the statistical significance. 5) Consider the eight guidelines for a evaluating a statistical study found in section 5B of the textbook. Focus on the following guidelines in your analysis. a. Guideline 1-Identify the Goal, Population, and Type of Study b. Guideline 3-Look for Bias in the Sample c. Guideline 4-Look for Problems in Defining or Measuring the Variable of Interest d. Guideline 7-Check that the Results are Presented Fairly (Do the graphics appear to accurately represent the results?) Include two or more scholarly resources. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guides and Templates, located in the Student Success Center. This assignment uses a scoring guide. Review the scoring guide prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center.

#MAT 144 All Weeks Discussions and Assignments Entire Course

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mathlingo · 6 years ago

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Best Apps for Teaching Math to Kids

Introduction: It is indeed a challenge for parents and teachers to get their children and students stay focused while studying, courtesy various games and gadgets. Also, we all know that math is one of the most important subjects on which the entire career of a student can be built on.

Therefore, learning the foundations of the subject is very important for a school-going kid. Learning math needs rapt attention and focus. So, to grab the students’ attention for long for uninterrupted learning modern day teachers are resorting to various new-age ideas. Apps are one of them.

Math with an app: Apps are a smart and fun way to teach this subject in which many students are still weak. Math as a subject has sufficiently earned a bad name among students of all backgrounds. Scoring poorly in math hampers the overall percentile of a student’s marks. Hence, teachers and wise parents are taking help from the latest best apps for teaching math to their children. Let’s find out how these apps function and help kids hone their skills.

1. Math training for kids: This app works for developing the basics of math. It is meant for students aged 3 years onwards. This is an Android-based app and it helps students learn the elementary mathematical functions such as addition, subscription, division and multiplication in a neat and simple way. Several games and practice exercises are there in this app for students to revise their lessons.

2. Prodigy Games: This is another popular app among both students and teachers. This app works best for students studying in class I – VIII. Prodigy Game is free on the Android, iOS and web platforms. Through his app, math-based learning programs can be conducted in the classroom and it also helps in homework projects. Built-in diagnostic tests are another important feature of this app.

3. CK12: This is a free app which is available on Windows8, iPhone, iPad, Android and web platforms. In CK12, you will find high-quality content with the latest technology. The interactive learning pattern here offers PLIX, simulations and adaptive practice.

4. Photomath: This app allows taking a snap of the math problem and getting it done by step by step solution. Right from basic arithmetic to fractions to trigonometry, quadratic equations and linear equations, all these mathematical problems can be solved quite easily through this app. Many teachers recommend this app for homework projects.

5. Colorado’s PhET: Colorado University’s PhET simulations project is very popular as a classroom tool for the teachers of math and progressive science. This app provides animated illustrations that can be incorporated into homework assignments and lectures so that students can learn their lessons in a lucid manner.

6. Khan Academy: Bollywood actor Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, is behind one of these best apps for teaching math. The actor uploaded a few videos on Algebra to teach his cousin in a remote area. The videos got thousands of views, now Khan Academy offers free lessons to students from the farthest corner of the country through their app and videos.

7. Mathlingo: Mathlingo is another fun way of learning mathematics. The app offers a wide array of interesting games that require basic skills of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and other quantitative knowledge. The games are divided in different grades as per their difficulty level. The app offers lessons for each game on how to play them. This is not just a fun way of learning the important lessons of math, but also builds a competitive attitude among students.

To know more information about the Mathlingo app by Mafooly, check them out in the App store or the Play store.

8. GeometryPad: Many students find geometry a hard nut to crack. But with this app students can get a clarified idea about the basic geometry lessons. This app is popular among teachers too as it helps engage students in classroom activities in a better way. Assignments for the home can be sent through this app that allows students to experiment with different geometrical shapes and complex sketches.

9. BuzzMath: BuzzMath is considered one of the best apps for teaching math as it offers over 3000 problems aligned with the common core state standards. Parents and teachers love this app as it is user-friendly and can be accessed from any device. Abstract mathematical concepts are explained through this app by using concrete objects. Besides, the app also has a collection of over 500 learning games and videos. Once you get the free trial, you can subscribe to this app for regular lessons.

10. Singapore Math: We are all aware that students in Singapore are especially skilled in math. It for their unique teaching methods that students feel at ease in learning even the most complex concepts of the subject. The methods are compatible with the CCSS. Now keeping this point in mind, this app has been designed. Hundreds of learning games and educational videos are available in this app that makes students fight their fears for the subject.

11. MyScript Calculator: This app is another unique one as it works by using your handwriting. It has been designed for the Android devices and all the features of this app are smart, simple and intuitive. Long calculations, especially in arithmetic, are performed in a jiffy through this app.

12. iMathematics: This app is also gaining popularity among kids as it solves complex equations for them step by step.

Apart from these Computer Carl, Bingo and Aardy’s Multiplication apps are becoming popular in the market with each day.

Conclusion: Apps are fast, easy, unique and fun. Undoubtedly, the appeal of these apps is quite strong and deep among the young minds. Teachers also find them to be of great assistance as they lessen the burden of their job.

But one thing cannot be denied that the traditional way of learning through books, pen, and paper still hugely beneficial. As a parent or a helpful teacher, you should make sure that children do not get solely dependent upon apps. Rather, they learn to maintain a balance between the old and the new. Their learning will be complete and fruitful if there is a communication between the old and new ways of learning.

The post Best Apps for Teaching Math to Kids appeared first on Mathlingo.

from https://mathlingo.com/best-apps-for-teaching-math/

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thrashermaxey · 6 years ago

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Ramblings: Updates on Schultz, Zuccarello, and Jenner; Sergachev; Dahlin; Gurianov; Ceci – January 31

Big news for the Penguins and their fans as Justin Schultz appeared and skated at the team’s gameday skate on Wednesday. He did so in a non-contact jersey but considering he’s returning from a broken ankle suffered three and a half months ago, it’s a very good sign. He’ll need a lot of time to get anywhere near game shape so don’t expect him back in the lineup in the immediate future, but he’s trending in that direction.

It looks like the Blue Jackets will be without Boone Jenner for at least one more game.

It’s quite the odd career Jenner has had so far. Through his first three seasons totalling 185 games, Jenner scored 0.82 goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five, landing 8.28 shots per 60 minutes while shooting 9.94 percent. In the three seasons since totalling 205 games, he’s scoring just 0.68 goals per 60 minutes while landing 9.46 shots per 60 minutes, converting them at a 7.22 percent clip. Remember that this excludes the power play, so his early career PP usage isn’t relevant for this particular discussion.

Jenner’s expected goals have fluctuated season by season but that rate is actually higher over the last two and a half seasons (0.88) than his first three seasons (0.8, via Corsica). It’s not as if the manner in which he scores goals has changed much, it’s just that there are fewer of them.

I’m not going to dig deeper for today but it’s just weird to see this kind of production fluctuation over such large samples at this stage of a player’s career.

Mats Zuccarello was back in practice on Wednesday for the Rangers, in a normal jersey in his usual spot on the top line. It looks like he’ll be back for their next contest.

Before the season, I said it was kind of a make-or-break year for Denis Gurianov, the Dallas Stars prospect forward. He’s over a point-per-game in the AHL and has been able to crack the NHL lineup at times, including Wednesday night for Valeri Nichushkin. He still needs to shoot more but at least he’s showing the improvements needed to take that next step.

In other news, I’m throwing in the towel on Nichushkin. I fell in love with his skills years ago and was very high on him, but it just hasn’t translated since his rookie year. The hope is he can turn into a reliable two-way bottom-six forward, which I don’t think is what he wants to be. I’m interested to see how this all turns out.

I was watching a TSN segment on Tuesday night and Bob McKenzie discussed that the Sens could be looking to move Cody Ceci. This comes on the heels of seeing Jake Muzzin traded to Toronto, and Ottawa thinking they could get some sort of package in the neighbourhood of what Muzzin returned. Now, delusion aside, trading Ceci does make sense for this team. He’s an RFA probably looking for a long-term contract and that long-term contract, whatever he does get, will not look pretty. If they can get anything for him, they should.

Ceci is a guy who is coveted in multi-cat leagues because he can provide stout peripheral totals in both hits and blocks, while giving decent shot totals and a reasonable amount of points. All this, however, is a function of two things: ice time and playing on a bad team. That second part allows him to rack up hits and blocked shots at a higher rate than many of those d-men on good teams (your team can’t have the puck if you want to pile up the blocks and hits) and the first part allows him to boost his totals. If he’s traded somewhere like Columbus, the Islanders, or Minnesota where he’d be very unlikely to get top-pair minutes and where the teams are much better defensively, what do his peripheral stats look like? He won’t fall off the map but he won’t produce to the level he’s currently enjoying, either. Something Ceci owners need to keep in mind as the trade deadline approaches.

While on the topic of defencemen, let’s continue on with Mikhail Sergachev.

I was looking up Brent Burns’s stats for something unrelated and came across this: one guess as to which defenceman is second behind Burns in the NHL in primary assists/60 minutes at five-on-five (min. 600 minutes)? Given the topic of this section, it’s probably easy to guess it’s Tampa Bay’s 20-year old blue liner.

Before the season started, I was adamant in these Ramblings that Sergachev would be worth his ADP. A lot of it is league-dependent but he was often going between the 30th and 40th defenceman. That has not been the case this year as he’s outside the top-50 defencemen in standard Yahoo! leagues, and has found himself in the rotation of blue liners Tampa Bay healthy scratches on a nightly basis. Not great.

Sergachev is on pace for roughly the same amount of five-on-five points last year (22) as this year (23). His production drop, obviously, has come from the power play; he’s not even on pace to crack double-digit PPPs a year after producing 16. He doesn’t have a PP goal yet, his PPTOI per game has declined, as has the team’s shooting percentage with him on the ice for the man advantage. Without digging into the how this has happened, this is why his production has receded.

When we look into different metrics, it’s easy to see why his assist production is the way it is (from CJ Turtoro’s viz):

He’s shooting less but finding his teammates just as often with shot assists and is carrying the puck into the zone more often. It makes sense, then, that his goals have declined but his assists, particularly his primary helpers, have increased.

Sergachev is still a wildly talented defenceman. With the prominence of so many young blue liners like Thomas Chabot, Miro Heiskanen, and Rasmus Dahlin, it’s easy to forget that Sergachev already has a 40-point season under his belt, is just 20 years old, and is still doing very well by all accounts. It might be worth checking in with the Sergachev owner in dynasty leagues to see what his value is. He might not do much for the balance of 2018-19, but his future is still very bright for 2019-20 and beyond.

On the topic of Dahlin, it’s worth reading Cam’s Ramblings from yesterday for the history that the rookie defenceman could make this season. I just wanted to add a little context to it.

First, he isn’t shooting much. Among d-men at five-on-five, he’s in the 60th percentile. That isn’t a huge concern, though. We don’t expect 18-year old defencemen to shoot a lot, even the elite ones. Don’t read anything into it unless this persists for three seasons.

What worries me for the balance of 2018-19 is his secondary assists. At time of writing, he’s averaging 0.8 secondary assists per 60 minutes at 5v5. That’s the fourth-highest mark in the NHL. There are a lot of guys at the top of the leaderboard that we’d consider puck-movers like Morgan Rielly, Erik Karlsson, Mark Giordano, and Thomas Chabot. Even for elite guys with track records like Rielly, Karlsson, and Giordano, they’re exceptionally high marks. All three players are currently enjoying career highs, and in the case of Rielly, he’s over three times higher than his three-year average from 2015-18. We can talk about increased goal scoring all we want but that doesn’t explain such a jump. There’s a good bit of luck mixed in there.

I’m not trying to take anything away from the kid. His ability to drive the play, especially offensively, is already very obvious. He’s having a great year so far and has every look of a player who’ll be in the Norris conversation in the next three years, and then every year for 10 years after that. All I’m saying is that he’s a player whose fantasy value for 2018-19 is dependent on assists and plus/minus. Having such a high rate of secondary assists and a .937 save percentage at 5v5 behind him is cause for concern over the next couple of months. This has nothing to do with his long-term outlook, just the next nine weeks.

Kudos to NBC for having Olympian Kendall Coyne as an analyst for the Pittsburgh-Tampa Bay game Wednesday night, acting as a between-the-glass commentator alongside Pierre McGuire. Maybe she doesn't know that Matt Cullen once got detention for throwing a snowball when he was 11 years old like McGuire does, but she's more than qualified for this position. Hopefully it's a crack in the door for more women to be features of broadcasts down the road, rather than as a host or presenter.

Updates on the games in the morning.

The last couple Ramblings I’ve been discussing the changing nature of defencemen and what they produce. Last week I just briefly touched on it while going a little bit deeper in Tuesday’s Ramblings.

I got thinking about this. It’s something I think is definitely worth discussing and can have a significant impact on how we view defencemen in the fantasy game, how we value defencemen, and how we draft defencemen. I also started thinking that maybe this isn’t the best time to cover this. To really get a clear picture on blue line production it’s probably best to put this off until the regular season has finished. Using a two-thirds season sample really doesn’t make a lot of sense and figuring out why the upper-tier of defencemen are producing more points doesn’t really help fantasy owners for the next two months as opposed to the next two years or so. I’m going to shelf this until April (and I’ve set a reminder to do so just in case I forget).

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-updates-on-schultz-zuccarello-and-jenner-sergachev-dahlin-gurianov-ceci-january-31/

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junker-town · 6 years ago

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Luka Doncic shows the underappreciated importance of the ‘last step’

Luka Doncic is athletic, just not in the narrow way we talk about it. That says more about us than him.

Spend an afternoon combing through pre-draft scouting reports of Dallas Mavericks rookie sensation Luka Doncic, and you’ll notice a common theme.

ESPN’s Mike Schmitz — the gold standard of draft analysts — wrote that Doncic “lacks explosiveness for a guard or wing” and “isn’t the most functional athlete.” Sports Illustrated’s Jeremy Woo noted that Doncic’s “athletic ability has come into question.” NBADraft.net said Doncic “can be considered a marginally average athlete by NBA standards” and suggests “his first step is slow even for European standards.”

A prophetic Nov. 2017 Sporting News article wondered if “a slew of gifted freshmen” who are all “more athletic than Doncic” would leapfrog him by draft time.

Even Doncic’s peers spoke of him in the same vein. In the weeks before the June draft, Uproxx’s Oliver Maroney asked five American-born players plying their trade overseas to give their own Doncic scouting report. Their answers included 11 forms of the word “athletic” and two more references to him not being “explosive.” (Control + F it, if you don’t believe me).

If you’re looking for a reason three teams passed on a teenager that was named the most valuable player in the second-best league in the world, this is it.

And that concern has some merit, at least by the widely accepted definition of these hoops buzzwords. This clip of Doncic playing against NBA two-way player Jordan McRae in Europe last season sure displayed what most would call a lack of athleticism.

Jordan McRae's length and quickness on defense revealed some of Luka Doncic's biggest weaknesses yesterday. #GTGRadar pic.twitter.com/FHKZTTqPx1

— Chris Schmidt (@ChrisSchmidt27) November 15, 2017

Yet here Doncic is, dazzling Mavericks fans early in his NBA career. How can someone this unathletic be so successful?

Maybe it’s because he’s been able to overcome his lack of athleticism. Or maybe it’s because we actually define athleticism in an incredibly narrow way.

Consider the most damning sentence of all those links: NBADraft.net’s claim that Doncic’s “first step is slow even for European standards.” That phrase — “first step” — has evolved into hoops shorthand to describe any element of athleticism, whether it’s 0-to-60 speed, leaping ability, power, strength … take your pick.

Taken literally, though, a “first step” is just that: the beginning of a multi-stage process. Players with dynamic first steps, like Doncic’s teammate Dennis Smith Jr., still have to take additional steps to finish their moves. Even Giannis Antetokounmpo can’t cover the entire length of the floor in one leap.

Yet you never hear about how Smith or anyone else needs to improve their “second step,” “third step,” or “fourth step” to maximize the head start they gives themselves. You instead hear about how their first step shows their athleticism, and every other “step” is grouped into an entirely different category like “craft” or “skill” that may or may not get better with experience and hard work. These terms and “first step” function as basketball antonyms.

Luka Doncic is proof that they shouldn’t be. It’s true that Doncic’s “first step” is weak. Defenders can anticipate it and beat him to the spot, even with lots of space.

But the difference between Doncic and other players that do have elite first steps is that Doncic actually takes the term literally. Like a boxer that sets up his opponents with jabs before delivering the killer blow, Doncic uses the first step to get himself in position to drop his version of a right hook. Let’s call it his last step.

Doncic’s last step packs one hell of a punch. Look how far spindly Timberwolves wing Josh Okogie staggered after this Doncic “last step.”

Stop the clip at the very moment Doncic’s toe hits the floor for the final time, and it’s striking how much flexibility Doncic is showing. If you drew a straight line between his front and back feet, it might break your tape measure.

But rather than lose his balance, Doncic had the power in his legs to rise up as his defender stumbled backwards. He beats his man off the dribble, which is supposedly his weakness. He just does it by gaining separation at the end of the move, not the beginning.

You see that same process — the first step setting up the decisive, large final steps — throughout Doncic’s game. He uses that method to beat defenders in the open floor.

He also uses it in tight spaces, whether it’s to ward off shot-blockers like DeAndre Ayton...

or to power through tough defenders like Robert Covington, an all-defense selection last season.

The key is that Doncic deploys the last step to accelerate and decelerate, to equally devastating effect. The same gallop that leaves Covington and Mike Muscala in the dust also digs into Ayton, shoving him out of the play. Doncic goes from this position.

To this position, all while staying coordinated enough to finish the play.

Doncic’s last step serves him well in pick-and-roll situations, activating both his scoring and his supernatural vision. He uses a series of choppy stomps to run his defender into a screen, then pushes forward with those final long jumps to go through or around the help. Without those shorter steps, Doncic isn’t in position to finish defenders off. Without that final, long step, those shorter steps can easily be anticipated.

Watch Doncic’s footwork closely on this drive and finish over Karl-Anthony Towns.

It takes Doncic seven steps on a curvy route to get from out of bounds to the hole. Four run his man into DeAndre Jordan’s screen. The fifth takes Doncic inside the arc, but is purposely short to plant for lift off. It’s only at Steps Nos. 6 and 7 when Doncic gallops from 20 feet away to deep into the paint, and it’s only that final step that powers through Towns’ chest for the bucket and the foul.

And Doncic’s last step also works against defenders who try to close his space. When quick young Bulls big man Wendell Carter Jr. tried to cut off Doncic’s sideline drive, Doncic simply planted that last step right between his legs to open a passing lane.

Few scouts would consider Doncic more athletic than Carter, yet how do you explain Doncic creating that kind of separation despite getting beat to the spot? Maybe it’s an example of Doncic’s craft winning out over Carter’s quickness. Or, maybe Doncic taking that large step to knock Carter back and balancing himself to make the pass is its own form of athleticism.

I vote the latter, especially when you consider how Doncic uses the same last step to go backwards as well, whether off the catch or the dribble.

How many people on this planet can do the splits before launching even a crumbled up piece of paper into a trash bin from 26 feet away, let alone a basketball through the net with seven-plus feet of arms in their periphery? (Try it yourself. Just don’t hold us liable for any shredded ligaments that result).

A universal definition of athleticism encompasses traits like strength, flexibility, and balance, all categories in which Doncic would rate in the 90th (or better) percentile among NBA players.

But we too often fall for the trap of associating the term with flying through the air or quick-twitch muscles that switch on before the opponent’s. We should realize the limitations this places on our analysis, and yet we still can’t help ourselves. We make the rhetorical assumption that many of the 450 most successful professional athletes in the world somehow made it to the pinnacle of their sport by overcoming a lack of “athleticism.”

That assumption is becoming especially costly as the game is increasingly played on the move and in space, two places where 0-to-60 speed and leaping ability matters less. Last June, a FanPost arguing on Doncic’s behalf on SB Nation’s Kings site Sactown Royalty noticed something funny. Six of the 10 small forwards ranked highest in ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus last season had predraft scouting reports that questioned their “athleticism,” as did the league’s reigning MVP (James Harden) and its 2016-17 Defensive Player of the Year (Draymond Green). This intrepid Kings fan acknowledged that Doncic’s “athletic” concerns were legitimate, but cited these examples to posit the following:

What it DOES mean is that perhaps elite or even good athleticism isn’t as necessary to success in the NBA as many people seem to think, and perhaps we should be more forgiving of a perceived lack of athleticism in prospects, especially if they make up for it with skills like playmaking ability, elite passing, or high BBIQ.

The Kings, of course, passed on Doncic to select Marvin Bagley, a pogo-stick big man that’s still learning how to actually play the game. Maybe if the Kings saw Doncic’s positive traits as different forms of athleticism instead of gimmicks used to mask a fatal flaw, they’d be enjoying Luka-mania instead of the Mavericks.

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kristinsimmons · 5 years ago

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Another MCQ Test on the USMLE

By BRYAN CARMODY, MD

Hey, I’m not pointing fingers. Six months ago, I thought I knew all that I needed to know about the USMLE, too – just because I’d taken the exams in the past.

But I’ve learned a lot about the USMLE since then, and in the interest of helping you interpret Step 1 scores in an evidence-based manner, I’d like to share some of that with you here.

However…

Question 1

Which of the following represents the 95% confidence interval for the examinee’s repeat score, assuming the repeat test has different questions but covers similar content?

A) 239-241

B) 237-243

C) 234-246

D) 228-252

The correct answer is D, 228-252.

No estimate is perfectly precise. But that’s what the USMLE (or any other test) gives us: a point estimate of the test-taker’s true knowledge.

So how precise is that estimate? That is, if we let an examinee take the test over and over, how closely would the scores cluster?

To answer that question, we need to know the standard error of measurement (SEM) for the test.

So what’s the SEM for Step 1? According to the USMLE’s Score Interpretation Guidelines, the SEM for the USMLE is 6 points.

Think about that range for a moment.

(To their credit, the NBME began reporting a confidence interval to examinees with the 2019 update to the USMLE score report.)

Learning Objective: Step 1 scores are not perfectly precise measures of knowledge – and that imprecision should be considered when interpreting their values.

Question 2

230 vs. 235

232 vs. 242

234 vs. 249

For how many of these candidate pairs can the program director conclude that there is a statistical difference in knowledge between the applicants?

A) Pairs 1, 2, and 3

B) Pairs 2 and 3

C) Pair 3 only

D) None of the above

–

The correct answer is D, none of the above.

We can answer this by using the standard error of difference (SED). When the two samples are >/= 2 SED apart, then we can be confident that there is a statistical difference between those samples.

So what’s the SED for Step 1? Again, according to the USMLE’s statisticians, it’s 8 points.

That means that, for us to have 95% confidence that two candidates really have a difference in knowledge, their Step 1 scores must be 16 or more points apart.

Learning Objective: To confidently conclude that two students’ Step 1 scores really reflect a difference in knowledge, they must be >/= 16 points apart.

Question 3

A) 205

B) 225

C) 245

D) 265

–

The correct answer is B, 225.

Sigh.

I hear this kind of claim all the time on Twitter. So once and for all, let’s separate fact from fiction.

FACT: Step 1 scores for U.S. medical students score are rising.

See the graphic below.

FICTION: The rise in scores reflects a change in the test or the way it’s scored.

Just how far the distribution has already shifted is impressive.

When the USMLE began in the early 1990s, a score of 200 was a perfectly respectable score. Matter of fact, it put you exactly at the mean for U.S. medical students.

Know what a score of 200 gets you today?

A score in the 9th percentile, and screened out of almost any residency program that uses cut scores. (And nearly two-thirds of all programs do.)

Learning Objective: Step 1 scores are rising – not because of a change in test scoring, but because of honest-to-God higher performance.

Question 4

Two medical students take USMLE Step 1. One scores a 220 and is screened out of his preferred residency program. The other scores a 250 and is invited for an interview.

Which of the following represents the most likely absolute difference in correctly-answered test items for this pair of examinees?

A) 5

B) 30

C) 60

D) 110

The correct answer is B, 30.

How many questions do you have to answer correctly to pass USMLE Step 1? What percentage do you have to get right to score a 250, or a 270? We don’t know.

First, we need to briefly review how the minimum passing score for the USMLE is set, using a modified Angoff procedure.

Here’s an example of what Angoff data look like (the slide is from a recent lecture).

So how many questions do we have to assign scores to examinees who pass USMLE Step 1?

Well, Step 1 includes 7 sections with up to 40 questions in each. So there are a maximum of 280 questions on the exam.

If we take away the 10% of items that are experimental, then we have at most 252 questions to score.

How many of these questions must be answered correctly to pass? Here, we have to use common sense to make a ballpark estimate.

Everyone still with me? Great.

In other words, we’re left with somewhere ~85 questions to help us assign scores in the passing range.

The current minimum passing score for Step 1 is 194. And while the maximum score is 300 in theory, the real world distribution goes up to around 275.

Think about that. We have ~85 questions to determine scores over around an 81 point range. That’s approximately one point per question.

Folks, this is what drives #Step1Mania.

Note, however, that the majority of Step 1 scores for U.S./Canadian students fall across a thirty point range from 220 to 250.

And what important topics might those 30 questions test? Well, I’ve discussed that in the past.

Learning Objective: In terms of raw performance, most U.S. medical students likely differ by 30 or fewer correctly-answered questions on USMLE Step 1 (~10% of a 280 question test).

Question 5

A U.S. medical student takes USMLE Step 1. Her score is 191. Because the passing score is 194, she cannot seek licensure.

Which of the following reflects the probability that this examinee will pass the test if she takes it again?

A) 0%

B) 32%

C) 64%

D) 96%

–

The correct answer is C, 64%.

But medical knowledge changes over time. I took Step 1 in 2005. If I took the test today, I would absolutely score lower than I did back then. I might even fail the test altogether.

But here’s the thing: which version of me would you want caring for your child? The 2005 version or the 2019 version?

We have made the Step 1 score into the biggest false god in medical education.

It’s well beyond time to critically appraise this kind of idol worship. Whether you support a pass/fail Step 1 or not, let’s at least commit to sensible use of psychometric instruments.

Learning Objective: A Step 1 score is a measurement of knowledge at a specific point in time. But knowledge changes over time.

Score Report

So how’d you do?

NUMERIC SCORE

1 POINT – UNMATCHED

But thanks for playing. Good luck in the SOAP!

2 POINTS – ELIGIBLE FOR LICENSURE

Nice job. You’ve got what it takes to be licensed. (Or at least, you did on a particular day.)

3 POINTS – INTERVIEW OFFER!

Sure, the content of these questions may have essentially nothing to do with your chosen discipline, but your solid performance got your foot in the door. Good work.

4 POINTS – HUSAIN SATTAR, M.D.

You’re not just a high scorer – you’re a hero and a legend.

5 POINTS – NBME EXECUTIVE

Wow! You’re a USMLE expert. You should celebrate your outstanding performance with some $45 tequila shots while dancing at eye-level with the city skyline.

PASS/FAIL

FAIL

PASS

(I only hope that the pass rate for this exam is as high as the real Step 1 pass rate.)

Dr. Carmody is a pediatric nephrologist and medical educator at Eastern Virginia Medical School. This post originally appeared on The Sheriff of Sodium here.

Another MCQ Test on the USMLE published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

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trentteti · 6 years ago

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An Introduction to the LSAT

If you’re perusing this blog, there’s a good chance you’re considering law school. Or maybe your heart has been set on law school since you took your first step. Or maybe you’re just doing some research for a friend or relative who may go to law school.

If any of those apply to you, the LSAT is important, whether you like it or not. That’s because anyone who wants to go to an American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law school must take the LSAT. (Just as an aside, don’t go to a non-accredited law school. Trust us.) So, we thought we’d do you a solid and put all the basic and most important information about the LSAT in one place. Now, without further ado, let’s talk LSAT.

What is the LSAT?

LSAT stands for Law School Admission Test and it’s administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC). In a nutshell, it’s a test of logic and argumentation (more on this below). This bare fact sets it apart – far apart – from other pre-graduate level standardized tests like the GRE or the GMAT, which mirror the SAT and ACT that you are likely familiar with and which test reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The LSAT used to be offered four times a year, but LSAC has been steadily increasing the number of tests offered. Beginning in 2019, the exam will be offered nine times per year and will be going digital starting July 2019.

The exam is composed of six 35-minute sections, only four of which factor into the score that law schools receive (more on this below, also):

LSAT Basics Infographic

A visual portrayal of LSAT basics

2 Sections of Logical Reasoning: Logical Reasoning accounts for approximately half of the scored questions on the exam. Each Logical Reasoning section has 24-26 multiple-choice questions. Each question consists of a brief paragraph – usually an argument – a question about the contents of the paragraph, and five answer choices.

1 Section of Reading Comprehension: Reading comprehension accounts for a little more than a quarter of the scored questions on the exam. There are four passages, each with 5-8 associated multiple-choice questions, which, like Logical Reasoning, also have five answer choices. Since 2007, one of the passages is split into two shorter passages that relate to one another.

1 Section of Logic Games: Logic Games accounts for a little less than a quarter of the scored questions on the exam. There are four games with 5-7 associated multiple-choice questions. Each game outlines a situation and gives rules governing that situation, and you must make deductions about the situation using the rules. You might be asked to determine the order that runners finish a race or the kennels in which various dogs must be kept. Many students find logic games to be the toughest part of the LSAT, so here are some free logic games examples.

1 Unscored Experimental Section: During the exam, you will get one extra Logical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, or Logic Games section that won’t be scored. The purpose is for the makers of the LSAT to test out questions they plan to use on future exams. You will not know what section is the experimental while you’re taking the exam.

1 Unscored Writing Sample: This is always the last section of the exam. You’ll be given a prompt that presents two possible courses of action that a person or group is considering, and you must write an essay advocating for one of the two courses of action. This will be sent to law schools along with the rest of your application materials.

How is the LSAT scored?

The test is scored on a scale of 120 to 180, 120 being the lowest possible score and 180 the highest. There is no failing score on the LSAT, but if you apply to law school with a score in the 120’s or 130’s, let’s just say you will not be going to law school.

LSAC has a magic recipe for “normalizing” LSAT scores. It’s sort of like a curve, with a lot more bells and whistles. If you want a detailed rundown of the process, look at this article on our website. For the purposes of this post, though, here’s a simple chart:

RAW SCORE → PERCENTILE → SCALED SCORE

There are approximately one hundred scored questions on the exam. (This can range from 98-102, but you get the gist.) The number you get right is your raw score. LSAC uses your raw score to determine your percentile. Percentile is simply the percentage of other test takers whose raw score you topped. Your percentile, in turn, puts you at a particular location on the 120-180 scale.

Let’s take an example. Say, for instance, you took the June 2015 LSAT. Let’s say that, out of the 100 questions that were on the exam that day, you answered 83 correctly. Your raw score is 83. Comparing that to all the other test takers, you��d find that you answered more questions correctly than 91% of other test takers. Nice work! Your percentile is 91%. Using that magic normalization recipe LSAC has, you’d find that translates to a 165 scaled score.

How is an LSAT score calculated?

Your score isn’t given simply as a percentage of the number of questions you got right.

Test Equating: The LSAT Curve Explained

They call it The Curve With Verve.

What do I need to know for the LSAT?

Nothing. No, really. The makers of the LSAT assume that you have zero knowledge of the law. There are no facts or rules or formulas to memorize, and, theoretically, you could live under a rock for your whole life, come out, take the LSAT that same day, and do great.

Theoretically.

The test is aimed at assessing your ability to think like a lawyer, which is a double-edged sword. Unfortunately, the sharp edge is the edge that’s facing you.

To put it briefly, lawyers make arguments and attack the arguments of other lawyers. The best argument is one that is founded on solid logic. So, the LSAT is testing your ability to make logical arguments and attack arguments that are illogical. The Reading Comprehension portion of the exam does this while also testing your ability to read dense texts rapidly. Add all that stuff together, and you’ve got something that tests your ability to do the work that you do in law school without making you learn all that stuff first.

The thing is, most people don’t know how to think like lawyers, and your undergraduate career almost certainly did nothing to remedy that situation. Studying for the LSAT amounts to a crash course in logic and argumentation, which requires nothing short of rewiring your brain. Do not take this lightly. Studying for the LSAT is hard work.

How do I prepare for the LSAT?

We all retain information and learn differently. Some people need more support than others. LSAT prep courses can range from classroom courses to Live Online streaming courses and online lessons or tutoring. If you don’t know where to start to look, Blueprint LSAT’s team of Academic Managers are experienced in identifying a student’s needs and can help determine which LSAT course fits your goals and learning style.

In case you’re wondering, performance on the LSAT does, to a certain extent, correlate with performance in law school. Here’s an article we wrote on that if you’d like to know a bit more about it.

What score do I need to get on the LSAT?

That really depends on what school you want to go to, what your GPA is, and, to a far lesser extent, how impressive the rest of your application package is. We have this nifty little widget called the Law School Compass. Input your GPA and a particular law school, and it’ll tell you what LSAT score you need to aim for.

That’s just one of the many resources you can access by signing up for a free MyBlueprint account. You can also take the June 2007 exam, score it, and watch some video explanations, which could be very helpful, given that you read all the way to the bottom of this post and clearly are interested in knowing about the LSAT.

Hey, Blueprint! What LSAT score do I need?

The LSAT, as you may know, is not a pass/fail exam. Rather, it’s based on a scale of 120 to 180.

Hope this helped!

An Introduction to the LSAT was originally published on LSAT Blog

#Blueprint products #law school admissions #logic games #logical reasonings #LSAT #myBlueprint #reading comprehension #Studying #trent teti #lsat

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sallysklar · 6 years ago

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Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Principals and Test Scores

I read a recent blog from two researchers who assert that principals can improve students’ test scores. The researchers cite studies that support their claim (see below). These researchers received a large grant from the Wallace Foundation to alter their principal preparation program to turn out principals who can, indeed, raise students’ academic achievement.

I was intrigued by this post because as a district superintendent I believed the same thing and urged the 35 elementary and secondary principals I supervised—we met face-to-face twice a year to go over their annual goals and outcomes and I spent a morning or afternoon at the school at least once a year—to be instructional leaders and thereby raise test scores. Over the course of seven years, however, I saw how complex the process of leading a school is, the variation in principals’ performance, and the multiple roles that principals play in his or her school to engineer gains on state tests (see here and here). And I began to see clearly what a principal can and cannot do. Those memories came back to me as I read this post.

First the key parts of the post:

A commonly cited statistic in education leadership circles is that 25 percent of a school’s impact on student achievement can be explained by the principal, which is encouraging for those of us who work in principal preparation, and intuitive to the many educators who’ve experienced the power of an effective leader. It lacks nuance, however, and has gotten us thinking about the state of education-leadership research—what do we know with confidence, what do we have good intuitions (but insufficient evidence) about, and what are we completely in the dark on? ….

Quantifying a school leader’s impact is analytically challenging. How should principal effects be separated from teacher effects, for instance? Some teachers are high-performing, regardless of who leads their school, but effective principals hire the right people into the right grade levels and offer them the right supports to propel them to success.

Another issue relates to timing: Is the impact of great principals observed right away, or does it take several years for principals to grapple with the legacy they’ve inherited—the teaching faculty, the school facilities, the curriculum and textbooks, historical budget priorities, and so on. Furthermore, what’s the right comparison group to determine a principal’s unique impact? It seems crucial to account for differences in school and neighborhood environments—such as by comparing different principals who led the same school at different time points—but if there hasn’t been principal turnover in a long time, and there aren’t similar schools against which to make a comparison, this approach hits a wall.

Grissom, Kalogrides, and Loeb carefully document the trade-offs inherent in the many approaches to calculating a principal’s impact, concluding that the window of potential effect sizes ranges from .03 to .18 standard deviations. That work mirrors the conclusions of Branch, Hanushek, and Rivkin, who estimate that principal impacts range from .05 to .21 standard deviations (in other words, four to 16 percentile points in student achievement).

Our best estimates of principal impacts, therefore, are either really small or really large, depending on the model chosen. The takeaway? Yes, principals matter—but we still have a long way to go to before we can confidently quantify just how much.

I thoroughly agree with the researchers’ last sentence. But I did have problems with these assertions supported by two studies they listed.

*That principals are responsible for 25 percent of student gains on test scores (teachers, the report account for an additional 33 percent of those higher test scores). I traced back the source they cited and found these statements:

A 2009 study by New Leaders for New Schools found that more than half of a school’s impact on student gains can be attributed to both principal and teacher effectiveness – with principals accounting for 25 percent and teachers 33 percent of the effect.

The report noted that schools making significant progress are often led by a principal whose role has been radically re-imagined. Not only is the principal attuned to classroom learning, but he or she is also able to create a climate of hard work and success while managing the vital human-capital pipeline.

These researchers do cite studies that support their points about principals and student achievement but cannot find the exact study that found the 25 percent that principals account for in student test scores. Moreover, they omit studies that show higher education programs preparing principals who have made a difference in their graduates raising student test scores (see here).

I applaud these researchers on their efforts to improve the university training that principals receive but there is a huge “black box” of unknowns that explain how principals can account for improved student achievement. Opening that “black box” has been attempted in various studies that Jane David and I looked at a few years ago in Cutting through the Hype.

The research we reviewed on stable gains in test scores across many different approaches to school improvement all clearly points to the principal as the catalyst for instructional improvement. But being a catalyst does not identify which specific actions influence what teachers do or translate into improvements in teaching and student achievement.

Researchers find that what matters most is the context or climate in which the actions occurs. For example, classroom visits, often called “walk-throughs,” are a popular vehicle for principals to observe what teachers are doing. Principals might walk into classrooms with a required checklist designed by the district and check off items, an approach likely to misfire. Or the principal might have a short list of expected classroom practices created or adopted in collaboration with teachers in the context of specific school goals for achievement. The latter signals a context characterized by collaboration and trust within which an action by the principal is more likely to be influential than in a context of mistrust and fear.

So research does not point to specific sure-fire actions that instructional leaders can take to change teacher behavior and student learning. Instead, what’s clear from studies of schools that do improve is that a cluster of factors account for the change.

Over the past forty years, factors associated with raising a school’s academic profile include: teachers’ consistent focus on academic standards and frequent assessment of student learning, a serious school-wide climate toward learning, district support, and parental participation. Recent research also points to the importance of mobilizing teachers and the community to move in the same direction, building trust among all the players, and especially creating working conditions that support teacher collaboration and professional development.

In short, a principal’s instructional leadership combines both direct actions such as observing and evaluating teachers, and indirect actions, such as creating school conditions that foster improvements in teaching and learning. How principals do this varies from school to school–particularly between elementary and secondary schools, given their considerable differences in size, teacher peparation, daily schedule, and in students’ plans for their future. Yes, keeping their eyes on instruction can contribute to stronger instruction; and, yes, even higher test scores. But close monitoring of instruction can only contribute to, not ensure, such improvement.

Moreover, learning to carry out this role as well as all the other duties of the job takes time and experience. Both of these are in short supply, especially in urban districts where principal turnover rates are high.

I am sure these university researchers are familiar with this literature. I wish them well in their efforts to pin down what principals do that account for test score improvement and incorporate that in a program that has effects on what their graduates do as principals in the schools they lead.

elaine September 4, 2018

Source

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Principals and Test Scores published first on https://buyessayscheapservice.tumblr.com/

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thegirlwiththenerdglasses20-blog · 7 years ago

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Best MCAT Study guide 2018

Educating students to score high on over 90 standardized exams in the class of their 76-year history, Kaplan is one of the most well-established and omnipresent company leaders in schooling. Unsurprisingly, this test prep giant has a powerful hold in the MCAT market.

Historically, Kaplan has been famous to get an encyclopedic coverage of MCAT subjects, and with a new examination comes new teaching opportunities. Let's see how Kaplan addresses what is new in the MCAT2015 using their Total 7-Book Subject Review. Proceed ahead to our MST score report.)

What are the unique strengths of Kaplan's MCAT Practice and Review materials?

Jeffrey Abrams: the largest strength of Kaplan is that they go into good detail on difficult conceptual topics, which helps drive home the material for pupils. They also have end-of-chapter outlines, which further outline the chapter material and is of particular use for fast assessing old material--particularly in the last 1-2 weeks of studying.

Parth Kothari: Kaplan's detailed pragmatic approach to MCAT practice worked particularly well in the natural chemistry, research and CARS books. The organic chemistry book was quite readable, which is tough for such an abstract subject. The comprehensive CARS approach was a great way to break down a section that gives so many students anxiety, and also the research section wasn't a disappointment either.

Masis Isikbay: Contrary to the EK books, Kaplan also has quite excellent glossaries and indicators in each publication. This can make a massive difference for the student working through the AAMC manual and having difficulty finding a particular term or concept quickly. Although these chapter questions aren't in the MCAT-style multiple choice format, they highlight recall of information within simple recognition of theories. This recall will be a crucial skill to hone if students really need to score in the top percentile on the new MCAT.

What are Kaplan's weaknesses for MCAT Review?

While our first opinions may change after we've completed reviewing other companies' prep resources, below are our preliminary thoughts about the weaker areas within Kaplan's MCAT2015 bundle:

KS: My biggest issue is with Kaplan's test clinic issues--or lack thereof. The CARS publication literally has no training passages, just sample ones inserted in the chapters, and also the other novels have precisely 15 freestanding multiple-choice inquiries per chapter--none of them passage-based and several research-based. The books have neither partial nor full-length practice examinations.

PK: The material inspection and practice is basically separated: Most of the clinic is online, although the online material has some passages which are clinically applicable (unlike the end-of-chapter queries), many appear to only be recycled out of the past. Also, the online part of the 7-book collection is incomplete: The full group of videos, passage-based questions and practice tests are only included in purchasing a Kaplan class, so that they are most likely using these online materials to advertise their courses.

JA: Kaplan also includes extraneous information in its books that is not needed to succeed on the MCAT. As an example, there is reading in Kaplan about the Aristotelian strategy--this is something students studying for the MCAT simply shouldn't squander time on. The Kaplan chapters can be quite text- and - number-heavy, with few demonstrative figures, and sometimes the figures contained aren't participating, and overly complicated or hard to comprehend intuitively.

What is the philosophy behind Kaplan's MCAT Review stuff?

JA: Kaplan's general philosophy is to make sure all material is coated. So, unlike many other resources, they provide lots of detail for your AAMC-specified MCAT content.

PK: the business intends to provide students with something like a condensed set of textbooks that adequately covers the material.

KS: It is philosophically on the other end of the spectrum from Examkrackers: Kaplan instructs to the comprehension of the material instead of teaching to the test (though they've mnemonics and "MCAT Expertise" sidebars that attempt to reconcile the material with the exam).

Within their MCAT research procedures, when should students utilize these online materials?

MI: I would encourage these texts earlier on in the analysis process since they provide a comprehensive profile on most every topic, and there's utility in having all the info in a particular setting (particularly if a student is struggling with theory principles). Nevertheless, these resources aren't great for "getting to the meat" of the subjects, especially with respect to what will most likely be examined on the MCAT, so they can also be utilized as reference material but not to prioritize the information.

PK: Although these novels should not be utilized for 6-8 weeks of study, I think Kaplan would function nicely for a student who's planning on working for 12+ weeks. They will form a comprehensive bundle that students can utilize while supplementing official AAMC materials/questions.

KS: I'd normally use Kaplan as a reference only since its content goes beyond the range of the MCAT, doesn't prioritize high-yield subjects and is ill-suited to visual learners.

For whom do this complete review source be most ideal?

MI: I think students who like a consistent, conventionally organized textbook should use these Kaplan books. The format of chapters or figures does not change as much as in the EK novels, so some students might be distracted by the formatting.

KS: I'd be conservative in my use of Kaplan, largely using it as a reference guide except perhaps for more concrete students who welcome plenty of detail, have a fantastic awareness of what is high-priority MCAT advice, and learn best from straightforward, no-nonsense text.

JA: These books are perfect for students who have some deficiencies in their own content background and that need to perform a fantastic bit of learning. They'll be poor for students who only have 6-8 months to review material, but a solid possible source for students whose foundations are weaker.

PK: Overall I think these substances are excellent for many students as long as particular attention is paid to choosing the best supplemental materials. Kaplan Prep for CARS

Kaplan provides a very comprehensive method of CARS reviewing, going over everything from main notions to key words and how to build that into comprehension passages and assaulting different question types. Kaplan has a lot of good summary sheets of the strategy in the rear of the book to help pupils recall their CARS tools. There are no practice issues in this publication. Some pupils will find this strategy overly complicated and hard to remember on exam day. Bottom Line: Kaplan has an impressively comprehensive CARS reviewing strategy that more detail-oriented students will find comfortingly systematic, while some might find too complex to recall. However, the consensus is that at least some element of Kaplan CARS is going to be helpful to a majority of pupils studying for the MCAT, and the publication will definitely need to be supplemented with training passages.

Inside the Physics/Math publication, there is a statistics chapter that's a good "crash course" on the subject; it covers what will be analyzed on the new MCAT. Kaplan provides a clear explanation for each one of these data theories. Since data does not absolutely demand as many explanatory pictures, aside from a graphs/charts, Kaplan's mathematics- and text-dominated strategy is better suited to explain statistics over various other subjects.

-- Kaplan's data review overall is lacking in practice questions. You will find 15 sectioned-off statistics questions at the end of the chapter, and data programs from the other Kaplan MCAT queries are rarer than favored. -- On p.410-417, Kaplan includes another section discussing charts, tables and graphs. Although this is not a bad idea for a refresher segment, Kaplan must have more of these visual aids prevalent throughout their MCAT books and incorporated into more chapter practice questions. However, the quantity of practice questions is mostly insufficient to truly feel comfortable with the content, and statistics isn't well integrated into Kaplan's other MCAT practice questions in their social and hard sciences books. Kaplan dedicates a full 22 pages to discussing research on the MCAT as a chapter at the Physics/Math book, covering the majority of the MCAT topics demanded from the AAMC. Kaplan's text-dominant presentation of substance works nicely with this particular topic.

-- Kaplan did not completely cover research from the psychosocial field, either in the research section of the Physics book or in the Behavioral Sciences book. However, the online Kaplan materials do provide practice passages related to this particular topic. -- More practice issues, ideally integrated into the other MCAT hard and social sciences novels, is required to supplement Kaplan's topical policy of research. However, their literature will have to be supplemented with more training issues, ideally passage-based and integrated with other MCAT subjects (biology, physics, etc).

This segment is where the Kaplan strategy excels, providing students a middle-range quantity of information about a broad array of topics. In comparison to Examkrackers, Kaplan's flow of this content appears to be organized and intuitive, which is important for articles understanding. The corresponding practice passages online are extremely MCAT-applicable and research-based. Kaplan has some great summary tables which condense and organize notable amounts of data, including in the Child Development Milestones table on p. 35 or the Impression Management Strategy dining table on p. 327. -- Unlike Examkrackers, Kaplan lacks a strong introductory explanation on the best way best to approach this new MCAT section and the way the student can avoid using personal biases while selecting test answers. -- The images and at times even the info can be irrelevant to a student's MCAT studies. For example, on p.230, students will probably not have to know that Jung saw himself as a Tibetan Mandela, and on p. 127 they most likely don't have to observe a baby playing peek-a-boo.

Bottom Line: Kaplan provides a solid overview and organization of MCAT-based sociological and psychological theories. But, Kaplan does not provide a strong general approach for this new segment. This publication also comes with a notable amount of extraneous data and graphics and its own practice passage-based problems are separately featured online rather than integrated into the publication.

The organization of this book is intuitive and mirrors the flow of medical college biochemistry courses. The AAMC substances are covered pretty widely, which makes this part among the strongest things in the Kaplan series. -- In spite of having a separate biochemistry novel, some segments are not covered adequately. For instance, there aren't any visual aids illustrating the often perplexing combined inhibition or competitive inhibition of enzyme kinetics (p. 53), and there are too few examples of this frequently-tested titration curves. -- Kaplan also tends to over-complicate some topics. As an example, the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz voltage equation on p. 279 is likely not needed for the MCAT as well as the antibody structure provided on p. 76 is quite a bit more complicated than required for the examination.

Bottom Line: For students who struggle with biochem, Kaplan has a comprehensive biochemistry book that may offer a solid comprehension of MCAT-tested material. Students who have taken biochemistry and done well, though, will probably find they don't need the depth of the Kaplan book to do well on the examination. Either way, in case a student does decide to use this book, (s)he will need to supplement with additional MCAT-style passage-based questions.

Kaplan Test Prep for General Chemistry

Kaplan succeeds at giving a comprehensive overview of this AAMC chemistry content and there are only a few openings in the content. This chemistry book is particularly great for students who need a refresher on overall chemistry, because the Kaplan text does not assume any prior knowledge. -- there's additional miscellaneous information which will not be analyzed directly on the MCAT (e.g. that the electrodeposition equation on p.423) or need to be memorized (Van der Waals equation on p. 278). -- Some select subjects require more examples to show how to problem-solve, e.g. with titrations on p. 352. -- As with the other books in the Kaplan series, pupils will need to find extra practice problems, especially passage-based ones, to be ready for the MCAT.

Bottom Line: Kaplan has compiled a very good foundational publication in general chemistry that will be excellent for pupils who need an extensive topical overview. As consistent with other Kaplan texts, there is a de-emphasis on test-taking shortcuts along with the publication will need to be supplemented with additional MCAT-style problems. Kaplan Prep for Organic Chemistry

Pupils utilizing this Kaplan book will probably be well-prepared, and even perhaps over-prepared, for the MCAT organic chemistry content. The practice and review material is obviously organized, very practical and quite readable for this abstract topic, along with the end-of-chapter outlines provide a wonderful summary of the material. Kaplan does a particularly good job describing fundamental organic chemistry concepts that are commonly tested and/or potentially confusing to students, like distinguishing enantiomers out of diastereomers utilizing R/S configurations (p. 41), correctly rotating a Fischer projection to acquire the identical chemical (p. 47), distinguishing protic out of aprotic solvents (p. 86) and providing some of the funniest pictures we have discovered of molecular orbital combinations and hybridizations (p. 63-68). This specific text appears to possess more exam applications than Kaplan's other MCAT books. For instance, they've got an example on p. 98 of figuring out the intermediates and final products of a reaction, in a setup which just mirrors actual MCAT questions we have seen. The examples in the book only show the simplified molecules. To Kaplan's charge, the online materials do supply some passages with more complex molecules. -- Some motives may be clearer, such as the ones for specific lab techniques (e.g. separations and spectroscopy) and also for carboxylic acid derivatives.

Bottom Line: Kaplan's straightforward approach really works to explain some complicated organic chemistry theories, so keep this book in mind if a particular topic is tricky to understand. As before, supplement with practice issues from elsewhere.

Kaplan Exam Prep for Biology

The pictures and examples in the biology book are the very best in comparison to other Kaplan novels in the MCAT series, e.g. in the section on the nervous system and action abilities. Kaplan does a particularly good job inside this book covering complex subjects in-depth, e.g. the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system on p. 175, the negative feedback mechanism, mentioned multiple times, along with the forces affecting the Bowman's capsule. Kaplan did include information that is often analyzed but not commonly highlighted in different texts, e.g. that the trajectory of the semen throughout the entire body. -- Students may find this book a bit less engaging than they'd prefer to your subject matter. -- there's still a maldistribution of external emphasis with too much given to some subjects (e.g. cardiovascular and digestive processes, the prokaryotic flagellum arrangement) and not enough attention given to additional topics (e.g. oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange in red blood cells, no chromosomal number monitoring in meiosis pictures on p. 61).

Bottom Line: This Kaplan book seems to have the most visual assistance of this MCAT set and uses them comparatively well to the topic matter. Its very best attribute is its capacity to break down complex content into straightforward, readable explanations. This book also needs practice difficulty nutritional supplements.

Kaplan Practice for Profession

This publication has quite a logical demonstration, starting with the most basic classes and working up to increasingly difficult subjects. The mathematics, research and data figures will also be put in this publication - a extremely organized approach. Kaplan provides example problems with detailed answers - but these are more textbook-style than MCAT-style issues. The MCAT Experience segments features throughout the physics book are useful, e.g. the projectile movement shortcut taught on p. 23. Their thermodynamics segment is notably clear and well-taught. -- The MCAT irrelevancy of some lesson details really stands out (e.g. on p. 5 where they teach that the British machine unit of mass is a slug and on p. 66 in which they reveal a six-pulley system that is clearly too complex for an MCAT problem). -- There is a marked lack of supporting images and test-taking strategies for these physics topics. For instance, among the numerous gaps in the torque segment, there is never a vector diagram of forces drawn for the problem on p. 33. Projectile motion can be only given one little picture, and the fluids chapter didn't incorporate some quite classical MCAT presentations of the subject, like those using Torricelli's law. -- The Kaplan physics lessons and questions tend to get disconnected from the MCAT format and emphasis on chemical applications. For instance, on p. 133-134, there is a separate talk of fluids in physiology but no accompanying MCAT-type queries to examine students' understanding.

Bottom Line: While this Kaplan book does technically cover a broad range of official MCAT content, the vast majority of our Special Ops Team would not pick Kaplan because their principal physics resource. Just like other test prep companies' materials, pupils using Kaplan physics will need to find supplementary MCAT-style practice problems.

As of mid-April, when you haven't seen them, we've also assessed Examkrackers and The Princeton Review's stuff.

*Med School Tutors is not affiliated, connected, licensed, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with any of the companies whose resources we're reviewing.

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