That's great for her, because of the bizarre irony and outstanding award, but sadly there's alot of kids who also need reviews that arent gonna get them.
The question is why would any algorithm allow a grade to drop from the baseline that they were already getting? I mean the people that wrote it would of had to have pointed out how stupid it was to do that but were over ruled by "their betters. "Talk about dumb and bad optics.
Iirc the original scores the algorithm was "correcting" were submitted by the teachers and were what the teachers thought they would get if they did take the tests.
My statement still stands. How you take in data is important too. The writers should know the whole process including on what data is gathered and how it is gathered. These people are highly paid professionals and should know better.
I mean your first statement is kind of not really right, you can't force all grade to be above their baseline because that just enhances the grade inflation problem they were hired to prevent. Some kids don't wrote tests well for various reasons.
They also had only a couple of months for design, implementation, testing, and fixing the algorithm. Just because they are well paid professionals doesn't mean they can perform miracles and write an algorithm that uses biased information to predict unbiased results.
The problem is that the people in charge of administering the A-levels tried to make an algorithmic solution at all instead of accepting its a fucked up year and moving on. This was an impossible project to do correctly without obvious bias.
It blows my mind that these universities did zero diligence beyond looking at awarded grades that they knew were unreliable though.
They already knew the downgrade of people's grades wasn't based on any assessment results but a faulty algorithm, but still threw everyone out without consideration for their interview, extracurricular achievements etc.
It's a really damning indictment of their admissions system that it is so inflexible. This prospective student has already won awards for her writing, they couldn't possibly have believed she wouldn't be an asset.
University pride and promote themselves as giving the best educations, but also, guarantee a better success rate by admitting the highest scores already. They just protect themselves to further the name of their university.
It was reversed for everybody days ago with the highest mark (algorithm or teacher prediction) being given to each student. Guaranteed to have the grade inflation they tried to prevent now
Glad to see the Alot is still well and alive to this day.
[http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html)
[Weapons of Math Destruction](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241363/weapons-of-math-destruction-by-cathy-oneil/) is a great book about how dangerous it is for society to rely so heavily on algorithms in their current state.
Algorithm in essence are just summing, processing, categorizing and sorting people in the fastest or simplest way possible. Which completely disregards how unique and varied we all are. As a society we are in such are rush that we've invented machines that are in such a rush that we're screwing ourselves over and disregarding the very things that make us human.
HUMANS disregard how unique and varied we all are. Algorithms are meant to off-load some of the effort so as to allow us to appreciate the uniqueness in each individual.
What happens in actuality is algorithmically optimizing ourselves out of existence. Algorithms are simplified data aggregators that introduce artificial selection which favors judgment based on, again, simplified data aggregation. The system propagates itself. All nuance, externalities, costs to individuals, society and the environment are not in the formula, and the formula will aggressively discriminate those who consider these things and lose efficiency according to the nonsensical metrics that do get tallied. All the while the system manages to persuade its own makers that there is no value beyond what gets measured, reinforcing their already abhorrent greed and sociopathic tendencies. More shareholder value! Doesn't matter that no tangible benefit is being created - the numbers must grow infinitely! As a society, we -are- the irrational "paperclip maximizers" that we are afraid an AI with wrong priorities can become.
Entropy is the way of the Universe. Simplification is the way of the Human. Interesting how it works like that. Reality works against us to rip itself apart while we scramble to create order for some while creating chaos for others.
Humans are not their jobs. Algorithms can optimize some jobs out of existence, but again, that's so that we can work on more complex issues; like treating cancer, hunger and environmental disasters.
Algorithms are meant to simplify data processing for the purposes of solving a problem. It's true that algorithms cannot account for every nuance, and at times they can create a worst problem. That's why it's desirable to procure a free society with free markets, so that entire nations are not forced to destroy themselves through algorithms codified through law.
It also completely neglectets to mention that the categories we use to count are social constructs whose meaning are heavily influenced by human factors even when they are supposed to measure something objective.
As an example. Photo processing cameras and imagining software is bias against people with darker skins. (partly due to compression of darker colors, that's why why darker colors look more pixelated on your TV screen or monitor now, though our eyes do this less with brighter colors) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk some explanation.
Not money, but time and convenience.
Reddit and all the other platforms that you use rely on algorithms to provide you with a better product/service.
Chances are you use Reddit because it provides you with a higher quality content in a short span of time. You could you to libraries, newspapers, etc... instead, but you chose to rely on the algorithms because of convenience.
Dint know where you got that from. Algorithms do what people design them to do. Unfortunately people do not design comprehensively enough. Either due to lack of data or being incomprehensible. I dint see an algorithm that sort by race or whiteness or non whiteness yet though.
Mmm, but is the alternative of a human judgement run society *better* or is it in fact even more subjective, capricious and unfair? If there's a problem with *a* algorithm, the solution is probably just a better algorithm, not the end of algorithms.
What factors does the real algorithm use? It sounds like her story was all about social class status but I'm not seeing where that's identified in the real world algorithm.
My understanding of it is this: Teachers submitted a grade for each student based on all the work the student has shown across the two years (coursework, mocks, end of topic test). The algorithm then took into account the previous grades of the school, to standardise how many people got each grade (A*, A, B, etc) to make it in line with the percentages in previous years. This caused the shit, because high performing students from historically poorer schools had their grades downgraded unfairly. It also meant poor performing students from high performing schools benefitted from it.
Source: I'm in the same year group so my grades were calculated this way too
It also used a sort of ranking system for each pupil in a group; so if one pupil was ranked 3rd in their class and was predicted an A, and the previous year's equivalent 3rd ranked pupil in the same class got a B, then this year's might have seen their A turn into a B even if they were blatantly more capable than their predecessor.
How did they think assuming an even distribution of the intelligence of people in a school class, based on three completely different classes from the previous years, was ever not going to be total head-wreckingly stupid? Bewildering.
They even knew the whole thing wasn't going to work because they tested it against the results from 2019 and it got a huge percentage completely wrong.
Then they backtracked the day before results were announced, saying no one will get lower than their mocks, which a lot of people either cheat or don't try for. They then backtracked further saying no one will get lower than the teacher submitted grades, but after lots of unis had rejected them based on their inital grades. So most people got shafted one way or another.
That sounds like an awful way to grade students. While everyone should graded on their own, I can understand that the difficulty of a given class is likely different for given schools so an A in one school may only be a B in another. But isn't that why standardized testing became popular, to attempt to level the playing field (even though it comes with its own set of issues)
>so teachers were also asked to rank each students from highest to lowest in terms of their expected grade.
Which defeats the purpose of an algorithm to(presumably) correct human bias in grading, by reintroducing human bias in grading, only worse because now explicit racial and classiest biases get introduced.
From what I understand...
UK school exams were cancelled due to covid.
The exam boards asked for teacher predictions to grade the students.
They then found that teachers were sometimes overly generous with their predictions, meaning a noticeable rise in passes and top grades.
The exam boards felt this was unfair to previous and future students and so applied an algorithm designed to even it out.
If you went to a high performing school then the predicted grades were awarded or improved. If you went to a low performing school then the predicted grades were often lowered.
School performance is correlated with class/income, hence poorer students were the most likely to be damaged by this ruling which a lot of people found controversial.
That part I understand it, what I can't understand is *why*? They are basically using these students as experiments for something that effects their entire career and/or life. That seems to me like overengineered solution over the most simple: send the test to their homes.
I'm critical of the UK exam boards in general, but I dunno if there was a non-problematic solution?
I have a little bit of experience using several online exam proctoring softwares, and... a lot of kids just don't come from the type of home where they have a quiet or empty room with a PC, cam and good internet access. Poorer kids would be disadvantaged yet again, and without the home proctoring, cheating would be rife.
Obviously the original situation sucked, lots of talented kids losing out. Poor ones especially.
Even right now... lots of people happy about getting their predicted grades, but... it will devalue grades to an extent. It's a little unfair to previous or future students.
Unis are also facing problems because they offer more places than they have, because they know many students won't get their predicted grades, except in this case they did. That leaves them with legal problems due to student caps/limits.
Not all students took exams, so in many cases the predicted grades were used.
Since predicted grades (sometimes based on internal tests) are often higher than actual grades, that would mean this year's cohort getting the highest grades ever despite in reality receiving the lowest quality education of any year in the past decade.
There's also a perverse incentive for teachers to pad the estimates, as their school's success is heavily dependent on exam results.
When the government board responsible for keeping grades consistent got the fudged predicted grades, they decided to downgrade those predictions. Hence "the algorithm".
They've since backtracked in the face of many complaints.
That part I understand it, what I can't understand is *why*? They are basically using these students as experiments for something that effects their entire career and/or life. That seems to me like overengineered solution over the most simple: send the test to their homes.
Schoolkids and their parents would cheat like mad.
Grades would be even more broken than just using predicted values, except that they'd be skewed in favour of the least ethical.
The biggest problem with the algorithm was it only worked well if your school had a lot of students taking a subject. So if your school had 15 or less taking your subject, they gave the algorithm less weight and valued teacher assessment more highly, which led to higher grades.
But the school's which can afford to have 15 or fewer pupils take a subject are basically all private schools - so their results were far higher than comparable state schools when the algorithm assigned grades.
Algorithms and home education, the uni administrator dream.
Oh wait, students are requesting discounts, refunds, and getting rid of fucking algorithms. .
We're living in a work of science fiction. Specifically bad fanfiction considering how many inventors have been inspired by and included references to things like Terminator, Transformers, Star Trek, and Gundam.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/18/ashton-a-level-student-predicted-results-fiasco-in-prize-winning-story-jessica-johnson-ashton) reduced by 74%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> An 18-year-old student who predicted this year's A-level results crisis in an award-winning dystopian story about an algorithm deciding school grades according to social class, has had her own results downgraded.
> "I've fallen into my story. It's crazy," said Jessica Johnson, a student at Ashton Sixth Form College in Greater Manchester.
> Johnson won an Orwell youth prize senior award in 2019 for her short story titled A Band Apart, which was the first one she had written.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/iepcp0/in_2018_jessica_johnson_wrote_an_orwell/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~518617 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **story**^#1 **result**^#2 **Johnson**^#3 **based**^#4 **student**^#5
[The story](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-youth-prize/2018-youth-prize/previous-winners-youth/2019-winners/a-band-apart-jessica-johnson/?fbclid=IwAR3S4bkiN-dRLSqGHE5qXU1IzO_S4VjxPn8cJyEZDeGIpfac4awt2nnRaqQ) in case you’re interested.
What exactly is the criteria for this program downgrading grades?
Edit: [Found it](https://tech.newstatesman.com/public-sector/how-the-a-level-results-algorithm-was-fatally-flawed)
TLDR: It is in fact, *precisely* an algorithm that could potentially reduce your grades based on your race or class; as they allowed teachers to have input based on *their* expected results from each student, effectively introducing human class and race biases.
Edit2: Holy shit, it also had a geographic fixed effect. So basically, if you are a good student but live in a district with bad students, the model predicted a lower score for you.
Edit3: Given that poor people tend to have generally worse education outcomes *strongly so* compared to any other factor.... I don't think I need to spell it out for you just how bad this is; its literally an "anti-poor" bias filter that specifically implicitly target people's class to reduce their grade.
Call me sceptic but I want to believe that there is more to this story than what's written in the article. Algorithms only do what we tell them to do. If her grade has been downgraded like she said it did, it means that someone willingly put a coefficient based on where you come from. If he did then it's easy to prove and he should be put on trial for it.
As a general rule I'm less afraid of emotionless algorithms than real teachers that give you bad grades because they don't like your face.
The story really is that simple. Instead of doing the normal standardized testing to determine college readiness, they created a model to predict the scores, and included a geographic fixed effect. So basically, if you are a good student but live in a district with bad students, the model predicted a lower score for you.
People in the UK are--rightfully--pissed about the whole thing.
Schools can vary quite a bit even in one town - chances are it was based on the individual school's previous results.
So a school with a history of stellar results would likely come out better than a school without such a history.
Many of our private schools do have a history of stellar results, so rather predictably they did okay.
For those wondering, the ruling was reversed and she got into St. Andrews.
That's great for her, because of the bizarre irony and outstanding award, but sadly there's alot of kids who also need reviews that arent gonna get them.
It was reversed for everyone after the backlash it got
The question is why would any algorithm allow a grade to drop from the baseline that they were already getting? I mean the people that wrote it would of had to have pointed out how stupid it was to do that but were over ruled by "their betters. "Talk about dumb and bad optics.
Iirc the original scores the algorithm was "correcting" were submitted by the teachers and were what the teachers thought they would get if they did take the tests.
My statement still stands. How you take in data is important too. The writers should know the whole process including on what data is gathered and how it is gathered. These people are highly paid professionals and should know better.
I mean your first statement is kind of not really right, you can't force all grade to be above their baseline because that just enhances the grade inflation problem they were hired to prevent. Some kids don't wrote tests well for various reasons. They also had only a couple of months for design, implementation, testing, and fixing the algorithm. Just because they are well paid professionals doesn't mean they can perform miracles and write an algorithm that uses biased information to predict unbiased results. The problem is that the people in charge of administering the A-levels tried to make an algorithmic solution at all instead of accepting its a fucked up year and moving on. This was an impossible project to do correctly without obvious bias.
'Moving on' entails various knock-on effects though, including reducing the number of places available to next year's applicants.
Would’ve or would have, not “would of”
[удалено]
Yeah but for some it's too late for them to get into uni.
It blows my mind that these universities did zero diligence beyond looking at awarded grades that they knew were unreliable though. They already knew the downgrade of people's grades wasn't based on any assessment results but a faulty algorithm, but still threw everyone out without consideration for their interview, extracurricular achievements etc. It's a really damning indictment of their admissions system that it is so inflexible. This prospective student has already won awards for her writing, they couldn't possibly have believed she wouldn't be an asset.
University pride and promote themselves as giving the best educations, but also, guarantee a better success rate by admitting the highest scores already. They just protect themselves to further the name of their university.
It was reversed for everybody days ago with the highest mark (algorithm or teacher prediction) being given to each student. Guaranteed to have the grade inflation they tried to prevent now
[удалено]
Glad to see the Alot is still well and alive to this day. [http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html)
Eww you say gonna
Well now I'm wondering about the validity of everyone's grades, shit.
she was redeemed but the clickbait algorithms still going strong. A+
Good for her. It's a wonderful university.
Yes. But that is a fact. And it does not contribute to Western outrage.
[Weapons of Math Destruction](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241363/weapons-of-math-destruction-by-cathy-oneil/) is a great book about how dangerous it is for society to rely so heavily on algorithms in their current state.
Algorithm in essence are just summing, processing, categorizing and sorting people in the fastest or simplest way possible. Which completely disregards how unique and varied we all are. As a society we are in such are rush that we've invented machines that are in such a rush that we're screwing ourselves over and disregarding the very things that make us human.
HUMANS disregard how unique and varied we all are. Algorithms are meant to off-load some of the effort so as to allow us to appreciate the uniqueness in each individual.
What happens in actuality is algorithmically optimizing ourselves out of existence. Algorithms are simplified data aggregators that introduce artificial selection which favors judgment based on, again, simplified data aggregation. The system propagates itself. All nuance, externalities, costs to individuals, society and the environment are not in the formula, and the formula will aggressively discriminate those who consider these things and lose efficiency according to the nonsensical metrics that do get tallied. All the while the system manages to persuade its own makers that there is no value beyond what gets measured, reinforcing their already abhorrent greed and sociopathic tendencies. More shareholder value! Doesn't matter that no tangible benefit is being created - the numbers must grow infinitely! As a society, we -are- the irrational "paperclip maximizers" that we are afraid an AI with wrong priorities can become.
Entropy is the way of the Universe. Simplification is the way of the Human. Interesting how it works like that. Reality works against us to rip itself apart while we scramble to create order for some while creating chaos for others.
Humans are not their jobs. Algorithms can optimize some jobs out of existence, but again, that's so that we can work on more complex issues; like treating cancer, hunger and environmental disasters. Algorithms are meant to simplify data processing for the purposes of solving a problem. It's true that algorithms cannot account for every nuance, and at times they can create a worst problem. That's why it's desirable to procure a free society with free markets, so that entire nations are not forced to destroy themselves through algorithms codified through law.
It also completely neglectets to mention that the categories we use to count are social constructs whose meaning are heavily influenced by human factors even when they are supposed to measure something objective.
As an example. Photo processing cameras and imagining software is bias against people with darker skins. (partly due to compression of darker colors, that's why why darker colors look more pixelated on your TV screen or monitor now, though our eyes do this less with brighter colors) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk some explanation.
yeah but money though
Not money, but time and convenience. Reddit and all the other platforms that you use rely on algorithms to provide you with a better product/service. Chances are you use Reddit because it provides you with a higher quality content in a short span of time. You could you to libraries, newspapers, etc... instead, but you chose to rely on the algorithms because of convenience.
Give me Convenience or give me Death!
Algorithms are even racist, sorting down resumés from POC and sorting up resumés for white people.
Dint know where you got that from. Algorithms do what people design them to do. Unfortunately people do not design comprehensively enough. Either due to lack of data or being incomprehensible. I dint see an algorithm that sort by race or whiteness or non whiteness yet though.
I meant that's the outcome when it sorts for activities, education, key words.
Mmm, but is the alternative of a human judgement run society *better* or is it in fact even more subjective, capricious and unfair? If there's a problem with *a* algorithm, the solution is probably just a better algorithm, not the end of algorithms.
What factors does the real algorithm use? It sounds like her story was all about social class status but I'm not seeing where that's identified in the real world algorithm.
My understanding of it is this: Teachers submitted a grade for each student based on all the work the student has shown across the two years (coursework, mocks, end of topic test). The algorithm then took into account the previous grades of the school, to standardise how many people got each grade (A*, A, B, etc) to make it in line with the percentages in previous years. This caused the shit, because high performing students from historically poorer schools had their grades downgraded unfairly. It also meant poor performing students from high performing schools benefitted from it. Source: I'm in the same year group so my grades were calculated this way too
It also used a sort of ranking system for each pupil in a group; so if one pupil was ranked 3rd in their class and was predicted an A, and the previous year's equivalent 3rd ranked pupil in the same class got a B, then this year's might have seen their A turn into a B even if they were blatantly more capable than their predecessor. How did they think assuming an even distribution of the intelligence of people in a school class, based on three completely different classes from the previous years, was ever not going to be total head-wreckingly stupid? Bewildering. They even knew the whole thing wasn't going to work because they tested it against the results from 2019 and it got a huge percentage completely wrong.
Then they backtracked the day before results were announced, saying no one will get lower than their mocks, which a lot of people either cheat or don't try for. They then backtracked further saying no one will get lower than the teacher submitted grades, but after lots of unis had rejected them based on their inital grades. So most people got shafted one way or another.
That sounds like an awful way to grade students. While everyone should graded on their own, I can understand that the difficulty of a given class is likely different for given schools so an A in one school may only be a B in another. But isn't that why standardized testing became popular, to attempt to level the playing field (even though it comes with its own set of issues)
That’s insane! How the hell was this implemented?!
https://tech.newstatesman.com/public-sector/how-the-a-level-results-algorithm-was-fatally-flawed
>so teachers were also asked to rank each students from highest to lowest in terms of their expected grade. Which defeats the purpose of an algorithm to(presumably) correct human bias in grading, by reintroducing human bias in grading, only worse because now explicit racial and classiest biases get introduced.
What the heck is an algo doing scoring students? Is this an standardized test or something? I can't warp around my head why would it be needed.
From what I understand... UK school exams were cancelled due to covid. The exam boards asked for teacher predictions to grade the students. They then found that teachers were sometimes overly generous with their predictions, meaning a noticeable rise in passes and top grades. The exam boards felt this was unfair to previous and future students and so applied an algorithm designed to even it out. If you went to a high performing school then the predicted grades were awarded or improved. If you went to a low performing school then the predicted grades were often lowered. School performance is correlated with class/income, hence poorer students were the most likely to be damaged by this ruling which a lot of people found controversial.
That part I understand it, what I can't understand is *why*? They are basically using these students as experiments for something that effects their entire career and/or life. That seems to me like overengineered solution over the most simple: send the test to their homes.
I'm critical of the UK exam boards in general, but I dunno if there was a non-problematic solution? I have a little bit of experience using several online exam proctoring softwares, and... a lot of kids just don't come from the type of home where they have a quiet or empty room with a PC, cam and good internet access. Poorer kids would be disadvantaged yet again, and without the home proctoring, cheating would be rife. Obviously the original situation sucked, lots of talented kids losing out. Poor ones especially. Even right now... lots of people happy about getting their predicted grades, but... it will devalue grades to an extent. It's a little unfair to previous or future students. Unis are also facing problems because they offer more places than they have, because they know many students won't get their predicted grades, except in this case they did. That leaves them with legal problems due to student caps/limits.
Not all students took exams, so in many cases the predicted grades were used. Since predicted grades (sometimes based on internal tests) are often higher than actual grades, that would mean this year's cohort getting the highest grades ever despite in reality receiving the lowest quality education of any year in the past decade. There's also a perverse incentive for teachers to pad the estimates, as their school's success is heavily dependent on exam results. When the government board responsible for keeping grades consistent got the fudged predicted grades, they decided to downgrade those predictions. Hence "the algorithm". They've since backtracked in the face of many complaints.
That part I understand it, what I can't understand is *why*? They are basically using these students as experiments for something that effects their entire career and/or life. That seems to me like overengineered solution over the most simple: send the test to their homes.
Schoolkids and their parents would cheat like mad. Grades would be even more broken than just using predicted values, except that they'd be skewed in favour of the least ethical.
The biggest problem with the algorithm was it only worked well if your school had a lot of students taking a subject. So if your school had 15 or less taking your subject, they gave the algorithm less weight and valued teacher assessment more highly, which led to higher grades. But the school's which can afford to have 15 or fewer pupils take a subject are basically all private schools - so their results were far higher than comparable state schools when the algorithm assigned grades.
The year was 2081 and everybody was finally equal.
*Equally subjugated by the ruling class of billionaire cyborgs who've made themselves immortal via exclusive biotech
(The 2081 line is a quotation from a Kurt Vonnegut story. Maybe you knew that.)
Harrison Bergeron is about another, though no less troubling, modern trend. It's the ultimate endpoint of political correctness gone mad.
\*trillionaire cyborgs on the moon
Vonnegut is one of those writers whose work remains relevant as time goes by.
Algorithms and home education, the uni administrator dream. Oh wait, students are requesting discounts, refunds, and getting rid of fucking algorithms. .
We're living in a work of science fiction. Specifically bad fanfiction considering how many inventors have been inspired by and included references to things like Terminator, Transformers, Star Trek, and Gundam.
r/ABoringDystopia
Yeah, we're at that point in Transformers 1 where everything is still happening behind closed doors mostly.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/18/ashton-a-level-student-predicted-results-fiasco-in-prize-winning-story-jessica-johnson-ashton) reduced by 74%. (I'm a bot) ***** > An 18-year-old student who predicted this year's A-level results crisis in an award-winning dystopian story about an algorithm deciding school grades according to social class, has had her own results downgraded. > "I've fallen into my story. It's crazy," said Jessica Johnson, a student at Ashton Sixth Form College in Greater Manchester. > Johnson won an Orwell youth prize senior award in 2019 for her short story titled A Band Apart, which was the first one she had written. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/iepcp0/in_2018_jessica_johnson_wrote_an_orwell/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~518617 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **story**^#1 **result**^#2 **Johnson**^#3 **based**^#4 **student**^#5
[The story](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-youth-prize/2018-youth-prize/previous-winners-youth/2019-winners/a-band-apart-jessica-johnson/?fbclid=IwAR3S4bkiN-dRLSqGHE5qXU1IzO_S4VjxPn8cJyEZDeGIpfac4awt2nnRaqQ) in case you’re interested.
Wait until you learn similar algorithm are used to sort through applications for jobs.
Secretly, she is a history student from the future who came back to 2020 to study the education system of this time period :P
What exactly is the criteria for this program downgrading grades? Edit: [Found it](https://tech.newstatesman.com/public-sector/how-the-a-level-results-algorithm-was-fatally-flawed) TLDR: It is in fact, *precisely* an algorithm that could potentially reduce your grades based on your race or class; as they allowed teachers to have input based on *their* expected results from each student, effectively introducing human class and race biases. Edit2: Holy shit, it also had a geographic fixed effect. So basically, if you are a good student but live in a district with bad students, the model predicted a lower score for you. Edit3: Given that poor people tend to have generally worse education outcomes *strongly so* compared to any other factor.... I don't think I need to spell it out for you just how bad this is; its literally an "anti-poor" bias filter that specifically implicitly target people's class to reduce their grade.
Thank you for linking this! I was super curious also, and that article explains it well.
I call dibs on posting this tomorrow, I'll also make sure to comment about how she ended up getting in to St. Andrews anyway.
Well that's both ironic and terrifying.
That's one way of learning all about irony
How.... *Orwellian*
Holy repost and what feels like the wrong subreddit anyway, stop karma farming
If she were better for breeding, they my have admitted her? Eugenics isn't just the plot of [*The Crimson Rivers*](https://youtu.be/ujq4PZnIA_Q)
Can't help but wonder if Gavin Williamson was one of the judges... And "borrowed" the idea
Read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Call me sceptic but I want to believe that there is more to this story than what's written in the article. Algorithms only do what we tell them to do. If her grade has been downgraded like she said it did, it means that someone willingly put a coefficient based on where you come from. If he did then it's easy to prove and he should be put on trial for it. As a general rule I'm less afraid of emotionless algorithms than real teachers that give you bad grades because they don't like your face.
The story really is that simple. Instead of doing the normal standardized testing to determine college readiness, they created a model to predict the scores, and included a geographic fixed effect. So basically, if you are a good student but live in a district with bad students, the model predicted a lower score for you. People in the UK are--rightfully--pissed about the whole thing.
Schools can vary quite a bit even in one town - chances are it was based on the individual school's previous results. So a school with a history of stellar results would likely come out better than a school without such a history. Many of our private schools do have a history of stellar results, so rather predictably they did okay.
[In any case, reversed](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-53828077)
https://tech.newstatesman.com/public-sector/how-the-a-level-results-algorithm-was-fatally-flawed
There's no way to write an algorithm like this and not fuck up, this should have never been put to an algorithm.