Wrong! Any good educator knows that test scores (especially from a single test) are not the only way to gain additional insight. While the strengths and weaknesses of the standardized-testing model are a different discussion entirely, suffice it to say that the community needs to remember that, when it comes to education, all numbers are fuzzy. The learning process is not discrete, definite or clean-cut so why should we expect a signle number to show singular accuracy with any great fidelity? In fact, we cannot and it is for this reason that an automatic evaluation of textual data might help educators make better decisions. Perhaps an example is in order.

Let us say that every so often in a math class, teachers write a brief one-paragraph essay about each student summing up their competency and general performance. Then let us also say that students are able to write a sefl-evaluation each time their teacher writes something. So after, a period of time, each student has a bit of text in addition to their test scores and general grades. I propose using some sort of automated classification mechanism to evaluate the textual data and produce best guesses as to the nature of the content. Afterall, if there are 25 students in a class and there are 10 classes taught each day, then that’s a lot of evaluation data to be read! So what about using something like a naive bayesian classifier to sort through things?

But wait, doesn’t this just give us another mechanism to boil down the real-world intuition of the educational system? Well, no. If we let go of the idea that these numbers are perfectly discrete (which we know they aren’t), then we can use them to inform our descisions rather than letting the data decide for us. Probabilities are ok so long as we use them correctly. Few people would wear shorts in the winter just because the weatherman said there’s a chance of sun. So how might such a system be used?

Well, the point of a naive classifier is that it needs to be trained. First, teachers would need to assmble a training data set of some sort. In younger grades, this might be quite easy because students have a more limited vocabulary and might not construct sentences with as much nuance as they learn to do in later grades. As for teacher evaluations, there is a somewhat-finite set of words in the vocabulary of an educator to usefully describe educational progress. Relying on the consistency of such a set nomeclature might very well yield consistent results. Though, all of this would need to be tested anyway, right? This is just a thought experiment…

So the system would be able to chew through these evaluations and produce a guess about whether they reflect positively on student learning or not. Perhaps they could even be used to demonstrate growth. Getting this right would take work but it might lead to a useful way to model evaluative-data. Obviously, relying too much on this might very well to a negation in the positive nature of narrative evaluations but it’s worth a try!

After a brief moment, a sales clerk met us and asked for our receipt. Since these items were given to Ari as a gift, we didn’t have reciepts.  The clerk informed us that without a receipt we could not receive “refund, return or credit”. After insisting that this was unfair treatment of a customer (because they were gifts!), she informed us that, “only during the holidays” we would be able to exchange them for something of equivalent value so long as we purchased more than the total amount. A little push can go a long way, but the premise is kind of silly to begin with. To their credit, the sales clerk asserted that the B&N decision not to keep sales records or honor transactions without a receipt is in response to customers’ privacy concerns. That’s a respectable sentiment regardless of how much of a hassle the resulting policy is to the end consumer.

The clerk wrote down that we had a little over $25 to spend and Ari promptly went looking for another book he wanted. When he couldn’t find it, customer service politely informed him that, although there have been several printings of the book, they didn’t have a single one in stock. They could order it for him but it would take at least 3 business days before we had to drive back to the store for it. Ari found another book while Sarah and I got a few things to push us over the $25 mark. The one good piece of this was that I bought Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science for about $5 instead of the $~50 it started at.

In the end, we walked out having made due and but we were still annoyed and Ari didn’t get what he wanted. This brings me to my main set of concerns. If B&N doesn’t have the books we want, they take too long to order and we’re going to be hassled about basic components of doing business, why am I buying from B&N? Amazon Prime members have free 2-day shipping, which surely beats the order time of B&N, along with lower prices and an excellent return policy. After years of looking toward B&N, I don’t think their policies are doing much to keep me or my family as customers.