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The Lazseeker (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter PSsylockE
- Start date
T
tactic
Guest
its very accurate..
was within .5 of my real mark
was within .5 of my real mark
T
timbk2
Guest
same with me.
it was like 0.3 off
it was like 0.3 off
christ_ine
simply because
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2002
- Messages
- 1,153
- Gender
- Female
- HSC
- 2001
It was scarily accurate for 2001 HSC, if not for 2002 HSC. But, seriously, it's a hell of a lot better than OzSeek.
T
timbk2
Guest
it shouldnt be too much different.
LazSeeker will accurately predict what your UAI would have been had you sat the HSC in 2001 (provided that you are reasonably accurate when entering your marks).
No-one can guess at how it will turn out for 2002, but common sense implies that it should be somewhat similar. At the very least you should be able to gain some indication as to how you are performing and what needs to be improved.
No-one can guess at how it will turn out for 2002, but common sense implies that it should be somewhat similar. At the very least you should be able to gain some indication as to how you are performing and what needs to be improved.
christ_ine
simply because
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2002
- Messages
- 1,153
- Gender
- Female
- HSC
- 2001
Lazarus
God
Ohhh, James is a genius - but he's also quite modest
God
Ohhh, James is a genius - but he's also quite modest
Hmm...
Wouldn't a little critical thinking here suggest that there is absolutely no way of knowing how accurate or otherwise the Lazseeker is, considering it's had no test data?
To test it by feeding in data that it was created from is ridiculous. That's like drawing all the clubs out of a pack into a separate pile, and then being amazed when you draw a card from the pile and it's a club.
I wouldn't say "common sense" says that next year's results will be similar - why? What's commonsensical about that? I would expect them to be quite different, in some of the radically changed subjects especially (eg sciences). Class of '02 has a precedent we never had, so they have a much more complete preparation.
I think 2002 results will probably have highER proportions of band 6 results, as students have had a chance to figure out exactly what being made of "band 6 stuff" really means. We were largely guessing, after all.
Cheers,
Brianna
Wouldn't a little critical thinking here suggest that there is absolutely no way of knowing how accurate or otherwise the Lazseeker is, considering it's had no test data?
To test it by feeding in data that it was created from is ridiculous. That's like drawing all the clubs out of a pack into a separate pile, and then being amazed when you draw a card from the pile and it's a club.
I wouldn't say "common sense" says that next year's results will be similar - why? What's commonsensical about that? I would expect them to be quite different, in some of the radically changed subjects especially (eg sciences). Class of '02 has a precedent we never had, so they have a much more complete preparation.
I think 2002 results will probably have highER proportions of band 6 results, as students have had a chance to figure out exactly what being made of "band 6 stuff" really means. We were largely guessing, after all.
Cheers,
Brianna
Well, yeh...
Basically with the new HSC, you can't apply statistics to it any more. With the old system, the fact that "exam hardness" and "bitchiness of examiners" were variable from year to year, was ironed out, in that everyone was scaled. --Not perfectly of course. But it did allow fair comparisons between people and years.
With the new system, the only thing that's supposedly constant is the "bitchiness of examiners", i.e. standards aren't supposed to change. But we've already seen that that is never going to work. There was markers last year who said they basically had to guess what the criteria meant. Markers have to interpret the criteria, so it's still really variable.
"Exam hardness" is of course still variable, no matter how they try and smooth it over.
But the results now... they're just pie in the sky, pick a range of numbers you like and attach them to it, it's just ridiculous. you get a score of x in Subject Foo, what does that mean? It means you can do this, this, this. What does it REALLY mean? To students more than ever, results are just keys to uni. No HSers are sitting around going, "Wow, I have competence with manipulating abstract ideas, I'm so cool." They don't even want to KNOW that. They don't even care. They just want to know - how many people are in front of them? How many behind? How many do they need behind them, to get into Y Course?
Furthermore this system also makes it harder - well, completely impossible - to transfer results interstate. I took my results to Victoria - the only one that had meaning was of course my UAI/ENTER. Because they're comparable, because they're still bloody scaled.
The numbers I had for my subjects - totally meaningless! I could double them or halve them, add ten, take ten, what would it mean? Who would know?? There's no way to tell! That's ridiculous. What should I say instead, "the paper says I can use advanced terminology in a sophisticated and a consise manner", it's just BS. It is stupid to take away numbers we do want - you know, the useful ones - and give us meaningless crap instead. Who does this benefit? Really??
Surely the state govts should be doing everything they can to make interstate uni options easier for students, you know, variety and choice and all that. Why the hell is education still under state control anyway?... also ridiculous.
Hmm I still have a lot of repressed rage over this apparently... ;-)
Brianna
Basically with the new HSC, you can't apply statistics to it any more. With the old system, the fact that "exam hardness" and "bitchiness of examiners" were variable from year to year, was ironed out, in that everyone was scaled. --Not perfectly of course. But it did allow fair comparisons between people and years.
With the new system, the only thing that's supposedly constant is the "bitchiness of examiners", i.e. standards aren't supposed to change. But we've already seen that that is never going to work. There was markers last year who said they basically had to guess what the criteria meant. Markers have to interpret the criteria, so it's still really variable.
"Exam hardness" is of course still variable, no matter how they try and smooth it over.
But the results now... they're just pie in the sky, pick a range of numbers you like and attach them to it, it's just ridiculous. you get a score of x in Subject Foo, what does that mean? It means you can do this, this, this. What does it REALLY mean? To students more than ever, results are just keys to uni. No HSers are sitting around going, "Wow, I have competence with manipulating abstract ideas, I'm so cool." They don't even want to KNOW that. They don't even care. They just want to know - how many people are in front of them? How many behind? How many do they need behind them, to get into Y Course?
Furthermore this system also makes it harder - well, completely impossible - to transfer results interstate. I took my results to Victoria - the only one that had meaning was of course my UAI/ENTER. Because they're comparable, because they're still bloody scaled.
The numbers I had for my subjects - totally meaningless! I could double them or halve them, add ten, take ten, what would it mean? Who would know?? There's no way to tell! That's ridiculous. What should I say instead, "the paper says I can use advanced terminology in a sophisticated and a consise manner", it's just BS. It is stupid to take away numbers we do want - you know, the useful ones - and give us meaningless crap instead. Who does this benefit? Really??
Surely the state govts should be doing everything they can to make interstate uni options easier for students, you know, variety and choice and all that. Why the hell is education still under state control anyway?... also ridiculous.
Hmm I still have a lot of repressed rage over this apparently... ;-)
Brianna
Okay, please calm down a second. I am (or like to think I am) friends with 'Laz' and I was not actually critisizing the program. I did not and would never intend to hurt him personally by criticizing his work, if I thought he would be offended, I wouldn't say anything (especially on a public forum). As he stated - it'll tell you where you would've come in the 2001 cohort. I'm critisising the idea that you can apply it for 2002.
>>Have you even used the Lazseeker ? The 'advanced' Lazseeker lets you predict where you'll place in the state as a percentage. If you want/need a UAI of x, it gives you a pretty good indication of what mark you need to get that. <<
There's no evidence that it works as a predictor. And there simply can't be - there's only one year of data to go on!! Of course, as years progress, the program will become progressively more accurate. But there's simply no way you could even assume accuracy after only one year.
>> If I didn't know about this site, I'd have zilch trial papers, only the ones from my school last year, the speciman exams from last year, and the HSC exams from last year, same as everyone else. Maybe I have an advantage 'cause I know about this site! <<
I have no beef with this site. I was only referring to the program. I think the spirit of sharing that arose out in 2001 was awesome, and I'm proud that I was a small part of that.
>>Think about it, it's very easy to score exceptionally well in any course if you KNOW everything isn't it ? A lot of the questions are quite straight forward, just testing whether you know the work or not. Doesn't take a genius to learn all the content does it ? Just some dedication and organisation. <<
[nb. that this isn't really related to anything, it was just my opinion about how 2002 results overall will compare with 2001]
Hell no. If just knowing everything was easy then there'd be a lot more band 6 results in some pertinent subjects. It's all about the keyword crap and figuring out how to read minds and learning to guess what key piece of information they're looking for.
Take (...my favourite example) IPT. Now like there aren't a ton of computer nerds doing that, who know everything about everything inside out. Yet that subject had a tiny tiny proportion of band 6 results. Why? Because it's all about relevance and - like you said - organisation. It's obviously not that easy, I'd suggest. With a 10k cohort, it was extremely un-normal-like. Because - I think - the general mood and expectation of the people who sat it, was that it would be easy. The standards expected were higher than they realised. Fully 10% of the people who sat that exam *failed*. I would be really surprised if anything like that happened after this year. The 2u computing course that IPT effectively replaced was seen as much more of a 'bludge'. IPT, obviously, is not.
>>As for your criticism of the Lazseeker, I think that is awefully rude considering you obviously have no idea of programming. I'd like to see you take the time and effort to learn about how the UAI is calulated & make a program that can do what the Lazseeker does, let alone do it better!<<
I concede that it could well have seemed quite rude, especially considering I'm actually a 'blow-in' to this board, but if you reread my posts you'll find they have not been at all personally directed.
>> Hey, don't criticise someone else if you can't do what they've done, let alone do it better!<<
Think about that for two seconds and you'll realise that's no basis at all for criticism. Think how many crap movies you'd have to sit through, just because we're not all film-makers.
Brianna
>>Have you even used the Lazseeker ? The 'advanced' Lazseeker lets you predict where you'll place in the state as a percentage. If you want/need a UAI of x, it gives you a pretty good indication of what mark you need to get that. <<
There's no evidence that it works as a predictor. And there simply can't be - there's only one year of data to go on!! Of course, as years progress, the program will become progressively more accurate. But there's simply no way you could even assume accuracy after only one year.
>> If I didn't know about this site, I'd have zilch trial papers, only the ones from my school last year, the speciman exams from last year, and the HSC exams from last year, same as everyone else. Maybe I have an advantage 'cause I know about this site! <<
I have no beef with this site. I was only referring to the program. I think the spirit of sharing that arose out in 2001 was awesome, and I'm proud that I was a small part of that.
>>Think about it, it's very easy to score exceptionally well in any course if you KNOW everything isn't it ? A lot of the questions are quite straight forward, just testing whether you know the work or not. Doesn't take a genius to learn all the content does it ? Just some dedication and organisation. <<
[nb. that this isn't really related to anything, it was just my opinion about how 2002 results overall will compare with 2001]
Hell no. If just knowing everything was easy then there'd be a lot more band 6 results in some pertinent subjects. It's all about the keyword crap and figuring out how to read minds and learning to guess what key piece of information they're looking for.
Take (...my favourite example) IPT. Now like there aren't a ton of computer nerds doing that, who know everything about everything inside out. Yet that subject had a tiny tiny proportion of band 6 results. Why? Because it's all about relevance and - like you said - organisation. It's obviously not that easy, I'd suggest. With a 10k cohort, it was extremely un-normal-like. Because - I think - the general mood and expectation of the people who sat it, was that it would be easy. The standards expected were higher than they realised. Fully 10% of the people who sat that exam *failed*. I would be really surprised if anything like that happened after this year. The 2u computing course that IPT effectively replaced was seen as much more of a 'bludge'. IPT, obviously, is not.
>>As for your criticism of the Lazseeker, I think that is awefully rude considering you obviously have no idea of programming. I'd like to see you take the time and effort to learn about how the UAI is calulated & make a program that can do what the Lazseeker does, let alone do it better!<<
I concede that it could well have seemed quite rude, especially considering I'm actually a 'blow-in' to this board, but if you reread my posts you'll find they have not been at all personally directed.
>> Hey, don't criticise someone else if you can't do what they've done, let alone do it better!<<
Think about that for two seconds and you'll realise that's no basis at all for criticism. Think how many crap movies you'd have to sit through, just because we're not all film-makers.
Brianna
With the lazseeker how come standard english scales SIGNIFICANTLY higher than advanced english.
eg. put in the mark 80 for advanced english and it scales to 72.295
then put the same mark (80) in for standard english and it scales to 82.192.
if i had been getting the same mark in standard as i am in advanced it increases my UAI by quite a bit.
Now correct me if im wrong but isnt the purpose of doing advanced english to better enhance ones UAI mark?
eg. put in the mark 80 for advanced english and it scales to 72.295
then put the same mark (80) in for standard english and it scales to 82.192.
if i had been getting the same mark in standard as i am in advanced it increases my UAI by quite a bit.
Now correct me if im wrong but isnt the purpose of doing advanced english to better enhance ones UAI mark?
This is because a mark of 80 in the Standard course is much more difficult to obtain than a mark of 80 in the Advanced course. If you look at the percentiles that are displayed after you enter the marks, you'll see that 80 in Standard puts you in the top 1% of the state, whereas 80 in Advanced puts you in the top 35%. Clearly, a mark of 80 in Standard is 'worth more' than a mark of 80 in Advanced.
If you wish to compare scaled marks between courses, you must do so via percentiles.
A mark of 66 in Standard would put you in the top 33%, and last year it was scaled down to 47. The corresponding mark of 80 in Advanced was only scaled down to 72.
The 'Advanced' version of LazSeeker Online allows you to input percentiles directly, if you're interested in following this up. A mark at the 80th percentile would be in the top 20% of the state.
If you wish to compare scaled marks between courses, you must do so via percentiles.
A mark of 66 in Standard would put you in the top 33%, and last year it was scaled down to 47. The corresponding mark of 80 in Advanced was only scaled down to 72.
The 'Advanced' version of LazSeeker Online allows you to input percentiles directly, if you're interested in following this up. A mark at the 80th percentile would be in the top 20% of the state.
>> IPT was still relatively easy, I got 79 (top 9%) without any work. I'm sure if I memorised the texbook I would have got 90+. <<
I'm sure plenty of people did memorise the textbook, but I very very much doubt that would have guaranteed you a place above 90. 0.75% scored above 90. That's insane.
>>Maybe you should be more careful in your expression, so you say what you mean. <<
Fair enough, I will accept that...
>>LOL, that's a ludicrous example and your logic is flawed BADLY. Movie producers make movies to entertain us and make money! So we have every right to say it's a 'crap movie' if we pay our money to watch it. The Lazseeker is a program that was made to benefit people, if you don't like it, don't use it. <<
The premise I was responding to was, "If you can't do it, you can't complain." How was my logic flawed? The intention of the thing was not a factor, i.e. whether it was professionally designed to make money or as a 'goodwill' kind of gesture.
If a thing has an intention that is basically goodwill, does that mean criticism of it is not fair? That seems to be what you're implying. But then it would be unfair for us to criticise the actions of charities, NGOs. Or is it just "if money is involved"? Is it kosher to criticise Linux?
My stance is that if you're an adult, anything you put in the public domain is an acceptable target for criticism.
>>Maybe if it was the Ozseeker where you have to PAY, I'd be inclined to let you have some slack. But, after that example, I'd be wary of the rest of your so called 'logic'.<<
*shrugs* One supposed 'flawed' argument is no reason to disregard every other word that comes out my mouth, but you're welcome to if you wish.
I contend that my comments were and are not outrageous or unfair, given that the program is in the public domain and the thread in question was discussing the accuracy or otherwise of it. I might've said something you didn't like to hear, didn't agree with, but that doesn't mean it was inappropriate for me to say it.
Cheers,
Brianna
I'm sure plenty of people did memorise the textbook, but I very very much doubt that would have guaranteed you a place above 90. 0.75% scored above 90. That's insane.
>>Maybe you should be more careful in your expression, so you say what you mean. <<
Fair enough, I will accept that...
>>LOL, that's a ludicrous example and your logic is flawed BADLY. Movie producers make movies to entertain us and make money! So we have every right to say it's a 'crap movie' if we pay our money to watch it. The Lazseeker is a program that was made to benefit people, if you don't like it, don't use it. <<
The premise I was responding to was, "If you can't do it, you can't complain." How was my logic flawed? The intention of the thing was not a factor, i.e. whether it was professionally designed to make money or as a 'goodwill' kind of gesture.
If a thing has an intention that is basically goodwill, does that mean criticism of it is not fair? That seems to be what you're implying. But then it would be unfair for us to criticise the actions of charities, NGOs. Or is it just "if money is involved"? Is it kosher to criticise Linux?
My stance is that if you're an adult, anything you put in the public domain is an acceptable target for criticism.
>>Maybe if it was the Ozseeker where you have to PAY, I'd be inclined to let you have some slack. But, after that example, I'd be wary of the rest of your so called 'logic'.<<
*shrugs* One supposed 'flawed' argument is no reason to disregard every other word that comes out my mouth, but you're welcome to if you wish.
I contend that my comments were and are not outrageous or unfair, given that the program is in the public domain and the thread in question was discussing the accuracy or otherwise of it. I might've said something you didn't like to hear, didn't agree with, but that doesn't mean it was inappropriate for me to say it.
Cheers,
Brianna
I do believe Lazseeker although a nice piece of programming is practically useless to a student.
First of all there is no way to predict where you are going to come in the state. You dont know and your teachers dont know as this is a new hsc and they can't tell you that 'in the past years a student working at a similar standard to you was x% in the state'
So what your left with is guess work where even then you can't just say that coming in the 10% last year will get you the same scaled mark this year, there is just no way of knowing as we have only had the one year of results
First of all there is no way to predict where you are going to come in the state. You dont know and your teachers dont know as this is a new hsc and they can't tell you that 'in the past years a student working at a similar standard to you was x% in the state'
So what your left with is guess work where even then you can't just say that coming in the 10% last year will get you the same scaled mark this year, there is just no way of knowing as we have only had the one year of results
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