Kelly in Kansas

Print: The Chronicle: 2/24/2006: No Computer Left Behind: "As it turns out, 'good enough' is precisely what multiple-choice exams are all about. Easy, mechanical grading is made possible by restricting possible answers, akin to a translator's receiving four possible translations for a sentence. Not only would those four possibilities make the work of the translator much easier, but a smart translator — even one with a novice understanding of the translated language — could home in on the correct answer by recognizing awkward (or proper) sounding pieces in each possible answer. By restricting the answers to certain possibilities, multiple-choice questions provide a circumscribed realm of information, where subtle clues in both the question and the few answers allow shrewd test takers to make helpful associations and rule out certain answers (for decades, test-preparation companies like Kaplan Inc. have made a good living teaching students that trick). The 'gaming' of a question can occur even when the test taker doesn't know the correct answer and is not entirely familiar with the subject matter."

More great connections between history and computing and thought-provoking ideas from Roy Rosenzweig.