{"id":583,"date":"2006-09-08T10:26:02","date_gmt":"2006-09-08T10:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/08\/blogger-sat-challenge\/"},"modified":"2006-09-08T10:26:02","modified_gmt":"2006-09-08T10:26:02","slug":"blogger-sat-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/08\/blogger-sat-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger SAT Challenge?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, when talking about the new SAT<\/a>, I attributed the low quality of the essays reproduced in the New York Times<\/cite> to the fact that this is a test with vague questions and a short time limit. Dave Munger was a little skeptical in comments, and I remarked that:<\/p>\n

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Somebody ought to get a bunch of bloggers together, and give them the writing SAT under timed conditions, and see what they come up with.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dave said he’d be up for it, as long as he didn’t have to grade the resulting essays. That struck me as a big roadblock, as well, but in thinking about it a bit more, I don’t know that it would be that big a problem (more below the fold).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Really, the question would be a qualitative one: on a subjective level, do bloggers writing in a timed-test situation produce better work than top-scoring high-school students? All you would need to do is generate a bunch of responses, and post them, and let people make up their own minds.<\/p>\n

It strikes me that it ought to be technically possible to set this up. All you would really need is some sort of web-based form that would provide a text entry box and a strict time limit. That seems like something you ought to be able to get out of one of the umpty zillion quiz\/ survey packages on the web. Suitable questions ought to be readily available in one of the many SAT prep books out there.<\/p>\n

Once people enter their text, you just collect the answers (with associated names and URL’s, or anonymously), and post them to a blog or web page for people to read.<\/p>\n

So, two questions: 1) If one wanted to do this, how would one go about it? and 2) Would there be any interest in seeing this done? I realize it’s kind of a lot of work for a nerd-off, and doesn’t offer the glamor of math limericks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, when talking about the new SAT, I attributed the low quality of the essays reproduced in the New York Times to the fact that this is a test with vague questions and a short time limit. Dave Munger was a little skeptical in comments, and I remarked that: Somebody ought to get a… Continue reading Blogger SAT Challenge?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}