Reading Assignment
I was assigned to read the following three articles by Howard Wainer:
Graphical Birth Announcements—VOL.10, NO.2, 1997
Reporting Test Results to Institutions and Nations–VOL.15, NO.2, 2002
Finding What Is Not There through the Unfortunate Binning of Results: The Mendel Effect—VOL.19, NO 1,2006
As required, I summarize the first two articles and make a presentation. The link is below:
April 30th, 2013 at 8:03 pm
First, your presentation is impressive and professional.
Question 1: in the first article of your presentation, in the fgure 1( A visual depiction of a controlled O-ring experiment)the author talked about O-ring failure caused the disaster of space shuttle Challenger; in our textbook, this disaster also discussed, do you think if we put two parts about the disaster into one report, it will help the reader understand that disaster better ?
Question 2: in the slide 8 of your presentation, Arthur C Tray Score is four dimensional data: English 25, Social Studies 26, Math 19, Sciences 22. How to use his score to find his overall position in all students, in statistics, that is how to order four dimensional data ?
Question 3: I think the report to the students itself is also important, this report should answer a very basic question : what kind of major is good for you in the university ? this report should summarize the student grades plus the evaluation from the teachers, it is a dynamic evaluation system.
That is this report should help students find what he or she is good at, what he or she is not good at ? For example, the report is : Jianning, you are a good student, your grade and the evaluation from your teacher shows that you are good at math and physics, but your writing ability is weak. so if in college, you take the science major, you need to take some writing courses when you are freshman or sophomore.
do you think this kind of report to the students is useful ?
what kind of other stuff should be included in this kind of report ?
May 1st, 2013 at 10:02 am
1. On slide 4, in discussion of “Visual Explanations,” it was reported that the death toll had no profound change after Snow’s intervention. What was the situation and more specifically, how did removing the pump play a part in it? Also, what test was used? By the graph, it surely looks as though the death tolls are diminishing after that time period.
2. Why is it that they only compare the means with New Jersey? Are there other reports which show each state highlighted specifically?
3. How do you determine how stable the scores are? You mention the first graphical display does this, how?
May 1st, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Hi Jianing,
Your presentation is really nice. Basically “Reporting Test Results to Institutions and Nations” interests me to this subject. You did a good job.
Here is my questions for you:
Part 1:
Q1: Unrestricted use of color is totally contradictory concept to the graphical principles discussed in the Cleevend ‘s book. In the first graph you display the luxuriant colors were used in background of the graph. How do you react to this kind of color-use ? Can you explain the disadvantage of using so bright color ( What we learned from our class)?
Q2: What does the controlled O-ring experiment?
Part 2:
Q3. In Figure 4 a comparison is made to see the difference in the performance of the students over the States with reference to NJ, Do you think which graphical principles that we have learned in our graphics class are violated in displaying the results in Figure 4? How can it be improved?
Q4: reporting Table 3 of National Scores of Mathematics seems to be unclear , complicated to decipher the information. In an alternative way of reporting the table contents, graphical displays is nice and easy to understand the pattern of the underlying data structure. Do you think it is possible to display the data in table 3 in effective graphical way?
Q5: What does the score stability means? Can you explain why this score stability affect the current reporting practice?
Thank you again for your wonderful job!!
Sincerely,
Mohammad