New SAT, New Problems
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Here's a 200 page PDF on the new format with lots of sample questions: https://www.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat/delivering-opportunity/...
The sentence completions are gone; now we have words in context. Essay is twice as long. No independent writing section. Math is more algebra and prob/stats focused, especially with graph and chart interpretations. Geometry has been all but eliminated, coming in at 6 total questions in the Additional Topics in Math (paraphrasing) category.
In my view, the main issue with this exam is that it's more coachable now. I feel you can learn less math/reading/writing now and just exploit the nature of the SAT to do well on the new exam. Good for test prep, not so great for everyone else. The main issue is that you kind of have to dumb yourself down to answer the questions - if you start actually thinking critically, you'll run into trouble.
This creates political pressure for colleges to stop using the SAT in admissions, an existential threat to the college board.
How would this help? I've taught SAT courses, and Asian students are overrepresented in those prep courses. Those cultures tend to have a habit of using external prep.
Note for posterity: I'm not saying Asian overrepresentation is a bad thing. Just stating a fact about courses I taught. If the college board's motive is to reduce Asian scores, I don't think they've picked a good method.
This has always been true on the SAT--especially the math section.
In the math section, it is almost always faster to eliminate answers using backward reasoning than getting the correct answer using forward calculation. For the sample question, answers C&D relate to intercept--answers A&B relate to slope. The question asks about slope so you immediately discard C&D. Now, even a guess is a plus for you.
By the way, that sample question would get removed after statistical norming. It's sufficiently confusing that it won't pass the standard--poor students always miss--mediocre students sometimes hit--good students always get it right--that is required for the SAT to work statistically. The confusion is that choice of slope is arbitrary--there is no particular reason for why which length is on which axis and which is cause and effect.
This was actually one of the unique things about the SAT for me. While "sample" questions always had lots of confusing answers, the SAT questions were absolutely crystal clear. Any SAT section with more than one confusing question was obviously the experimental section.
But isn't that the point of the SAT? To sort the kids who have mastered these skills from the ones that haven't?
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119321/harvard-ivy-league...
The latter is, indeed, harder.
(sorry)
Edit: Whoops, misread the question. I see it's asking about what the slope of the line means and not just what the line represents in general.
The predicted height increase in centimeters for one centimeter increase in the first metacarpal bone
...as far as I can tell, the answer written for sentient humans would be something like:
As the length of the metacarpal bone increases, so does height.
But my translation is so obvious that I sat there for five minutes wondering if I was looking at some kind of otherworldly trick question. Nope. They just made a wretched problem.
Obviously, the original SAT was an IQ test (as the article says) that allowed poor but smart kids from poor schools to get into college. But that process is self-defeating, as poor areas have all their smartest people leave for everything from state schools to Harvard. As inequality becomes more rigid groups like the College Board are flailing and improvising.
"The predicted height increases in centimeters for one centimeter increase in the first metacarpal bone." (True, although the height also increases in any other unit for any amount of increase in the bone.)
"The predicted first metacarpal bone increases in centimeters for every centimeter increase in height." (Ditto, but this looks more correct because it has it increasing for every/any centimeter increase in height, rather than specifically one.)
Judging by the parent comment, I think they may have done the same, but failed to notice the correct interpretation? In any case, while as a native speaker, I only saw it that way for a few seconds, I can certainly imagine that someone speaking English as a second language could be thrown off.
The answers also do have odd wording - they refer to the bone itself "increasing", rather than its length, and the first answer's "for one centimeter increase" could be interpreted as either "for (one centimeter) increase", which lacks an article, or "for one (centimeter increase)", which is not ambiguous but not proper terminology either.
I think the design could be improved - first by avoiding the weird inverted question/answer position if at all possible, second by avoiding capital letters, third by using easier to parse wording:
"the predicted increase in height, in centimeters, for every one centimeter increase in the length of the first metacarpal bone"
The question is very specifically about the interpretation of the slope, and because the slope would be different for the other case, only one of the answers is correct.
(By "vertical" and "horizontal" here, I mean with respect to the graph, not the interpretation, although it happens to be the case that the vertical axis corresponds to height and the horizontal axis corresponds to length.)
It's a bad question.
If nothing else, in college, most of the problems will be posed in terms of standard jargon and conventions, so it helps to know it.
So it's A.
By convention, X is supposed to be the independent variable and Y is supposed to be the dependent variable. Since it is not clear which variable really should be "dependent", the question would get thrown out.
This was the kind of tricky question that would often annoy me in high school or college tests since teachers and professors were not always good at catching such ambiguity and resolving it in the most logical way. Standardized tests are usually pretty good about this.
Longer answer - According to test design principles, one would not use initial values that would lead to a potentially ambiguous rounding issue unless you were specifically testing the knowledge of rounding. In this particular case, there are much better ways to test knowledge of rounding than a two-step problem like the one your proposed.
But saying "what's the least" and then "round your answer" at the same time is silly. If you ask a student "each bus holds 10 people; how many buses do you need to move 32 people?" the answer is 4. I would hate to be asked to "round" that answer.
7075 rupees is too few; 7076 is the first whole number that is "enough."
The real meat of that question comes down to the student being able to figure out "do you multiply by 0.96, or do you divide by 1.04?" And the sample exchange with the fee is pure filler to distract the student.
EDIT Rerad Blackjack31's link, and you will find the original question, which isn't as butchered as it seems at The Atlantic. The present the example rate because they first ask the student to calculate the exchange rate. END EDIT
Plus, what about fluctuations in the daily exchange rate? The student is supposed to assume that isn't changing, but then why in the world are we talking about the daily exchange rate? Say it's a fixed exchange rate.
[1] I had a third grade teacher who insisted you could round to the tenths position and then the unit position, and always get the same answer if you just immediately rounded to the unit position. This is the test case that proves her wrong, but for some reason she didn't want to hear it.[2]
[2] I was in some ways a prat.
4.49 obviously rounds to 4.
4.51 obviously rounds to 5.
4.50, since it "should"[1] follow the same rules as any other number that starts with "4.5", thus rounds to 5.
Say I were looking at a real number of arbitrary length, such that it starts with 4.500000000000... and maybe has a non-zero digit somewhere in it before it terminates. With the "round up on .5" rule, I don't have to keep on reading out indefinitely to round it.
[1] This "should" is assertion.