Recent content by Potato Sticks

Haha yeah they’re going really ambitious everywhere. I suspected the national government pushed more than the states wanted. Maybe they want to end up with a budget surplus? They’re reducing jobkeeper and all already and lifting restrictions so they can dump the whole thing.

Obviously weigh your enjoyment and ability heavily, but also don’t forget scaling, as the impact can be quite substantial. It is just not true (and somehow heavily repeated) that you can get any ATAR with any combination of subjects. Some subjects will scale a 100 raw mark down to around 90 or...

Regarding the first part, I believe that the HSC should seek to only examine, but effectively, within a certain framework of a subject. So, using your example, one might not claim to be good at chemistry without good research skills, but they can claim to be good at chemistry theory and...

Ah I think I see where the confusion came from, we define “worse scaling” to mean different things. By good scaling I meant a larger increase at comparable unscaled marks, so even if Math Extension 2 cohort had a lower mean MX1 score than the MX1 cohort, as long as their MX2 marks are low, the...

Actually, I just realised, that the new biology syllabus scaled way better than the old syllabus. This couldn’t possibly be due to biology students randomly being way better

I don’t think this is quite true, scaling is a combination of the difficulty of the exam and cohort ability. If you put, say, math extension 2 students into math standard and math standard students into math extension 2, math extension 2 is still going to scale better, the scores will just be...

In my opinion the internally assessments should seek to simulate the external assessments as closely as possible, such to produce the expected distribution of scores seen on the external exam. This is best way to ensure that the cohort as a whole does better, and henceforth the scores are...

I think it’s obvious that the second wave won’t be as bad, unless they choose to forgo health impact for economic benefit, which I find unlikely. What it would cause though, regardless of whether we term it a second wave or not, is then widespread shutdowns. I agree with your definition of a...

Rule 1: Do not appeal English Marks Rule 2: Do not appeal an assignment where your marks are already good for a subjective response. I am sure that the teacher could just point out a zillion things where you could improve, even if a worse submission scored full marks. You’re almost certainly...

You need to be careful and really clamp down on your performance on your externals as you have no benchmark to compare your ability against. Preferably, choose subjects such as the maths and sciences if you are good at them as they are less dependent on marker preferences/bias and your...

As you noted, the differing approaches probably does depend on the degree of risk acceptance and the individuals assessment of the probability of further waves of infection. Currently, we are seeing the easing of restrictions without having eliminated the virus. My position is that this is...

The risk is actually likely comparatively the highest in year 12 students as they are pretty much young adults, compared to lower grades. If sending year 12s back faster can be justified, then we might as well send everyone back faster since the whole school will be back eventually (or...

Schools should not be reopened until either clear evidence on the long term impact and transmissibility of Covid on children is found or until cafes, restaurants, bars and the like are at least partially reopened (or at least children’s venues such as indoor playgrounds, etc.). They obviously...

Honestly, I believe America is somewhat past the peak, due to their poor testing regime. However, it is not well past, let alone enough to justify relaxation.

Most countries only slightly past their peak are looking at relaxation. One would expect that the cases rise dramatically once they are relaxed. Herd immunity might end up not working due to short immunity duration. Overzealous actions from the majority of countries is not justification for us...