Confused: 4U math scaling not as good as 2U Math?

candycrush2015

A bit confused when saw this news this morning:
http://m.smh.com.au/national/edu ... p;assetId=996241148

Can any one please explain? Thanks

limit-2010

The research published in the Australian Journal of Education showed that on average general maths students were almost twice as likely to improve their results based on their corresponding year 10 school certificate data. Those that studied advanced mathematics were three times more likely to see a reduction in their results with a nine mark advantage between the two courses.

absolute 扯淡  

I don't think the journalist has ANY understanding about 'scaling' at all.

i.e. his logic is like : easier subject ---> higher raw mark ---> higher HSC mark ---> higher scaled mark ---> higher ATAR

As you may already be aware, that's all scaling is about. The scaling process is meant to account for such discrepancies in the difficulty of subjects.

For example, having a top 10% rank in general maths(scaled mark=71.4) is not that much better than sitting at 50th percentile in 2u maths(scaled mark=65.4) as shown here : http://www.uac.edu.au/documents/atar/2014-tables/A3.pdf

And also the 75th percentile in 3u maths(scaled mark=71.6) is actually better than 10th percentile in general maths(scaled mark=71.4)

Basically all they can see is : easier subject ---> higher raw mark ---> higher ATAR

Having said, I am not suggesting one should definitely choose those  'higher scaling' subjects because performing badly could still lead to lower scaled marks. Also it's quite discouraging to have raw scores like 50%, 60% from assessments. (even though a 50% in a 4u maths assessment is probably better than 80% in a general maths assessment, many people fail to realise that )

candycrush2015

To be honest, still don't quite understand. But thanks for the info anyway.

chatchat

这个东西是看实际考试成绩占的位置，理论上讲，学4u 的学生别的东西也学的好，所以4u 的scale往上，但是，如果你2u 的成绩可以很好，但4u 学起来困难，最后考试成绩占位低了2u 很多，就没必要学4u。
要看个人情况做最好的决定。