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Tests vs. Reality
Jul. 23rd, 2021 10:24 amI think a lot about how test mentality can trip people up when solving real life problems. I mean, some common aspects of test problems are:
*Not tightly interrelated (ie. questions often test for discrete concepts so getting one wrong is not necessarily correlated with getting the others wrong)
*Answer predetermined (hopefully anyway, lol--but in real life, sometimes no one knows!)
*difficulty level designed around test takers (real life problems may be much easier or harder than the average level that someone your age or education level has obtained)
*short answer--many times a few sentences or even only a single word is the answer to a question (real life problems may not have solutions that can be adequately articulated in a small space or a few hours of time.)
*clear right or wrong answers - sometimes in real life there's no clear (or even acceptable) way to determine whether an answer is right or wrong.
Which is not to say that I think tests are useless, because I do think they can have some significant value. They just can't prepare us to grapple with all the problems we can encounter in real life.
*Not tightly interrelated (ie. questions often test for discrete concepts so getting one wrong is not necessarily correlated with getting the others wrong)
*Answer predetermined (hopefully anyway, lol--but in real life, sometimes no one knows!)
*difficulty level designed around test takers (real life problems may be much easier or harder than the average level that someone your age or education level has obtained)
*short answer--many times a few sentences or even only a single word is the answer to a question (real life problems may not have solutions that can be adequately articulated in a small space or a few hours of time.)
*clear right or wrong answers - sometimes in real life there's no clear (or even acceptable) way to determine whether an answer is right or wrong.
Which is not to say that I think tests are useless, because I do think they can have some significant value. They just can't prepare us to grapple with all the problems we can encounter in real life.
