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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I once had a professor who knew psychometrics so well, including its history but many ways as well that statistics could be used within methodology, and why, and when, and which types were preferable and which types to avoid and which types revealed nothing, that he seemed eerily erudite. He taught us the ins and outs of SPSS and Winsteps (R was just coming in) and we were eventually doing structural equation modeling. The last of his classes I took was my introduction to Bayesian reasoning. He really was brilliant and made me want to rise to his expectations.

But as a teacher pedagogically he was pretty bad. I didn't really understand his grading. He'd answer questions in such a way that I would become even more lost. But I was probably a better student in his doctoral class than I had been in the entirety of my (years earlier) time as an undergraduate.

I don't envy those whose job it is to evaluate teachers. I suppose a pre post assessment of student ability (at whatever), averaged across a large enough population, might be one way. Just looking at post scores or student evaluations wouldn't be enough.

Of course a school's PR team might likely be more concerned with shiny markers such as popularity with students. That certainly doesn't threaten the school's funding.