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bramflakes comments on Open thread, 7-14 July 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: David_Gerard 07 July 2014 07:14AM

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Comment author: bramflakes 14 July 2014 12:19:36AM *  0 points [-]

Thanks for the explanation. The skill ceiling/floor argument makes sense for GCSEs, but I'm not sure how well it works for A-Levels. Boys only outperform girls at the very very top end, and despite the complaints that the ceiling isn't high enough, I don't think it can account for all the discrepancy (he said, remembering his bad stats intuition).

Maybe it's higher male variance and higher female mean?

Class grades also count for zilch in both, it was all exams last time I checked.

Comment author: gwern 14 July 2014 12:53:28AM *  2 points [-]

Boys only outperform girls at the very very top end,

I'm not sure I understand your link. If 43.7% of people score an A and that's the highest score, then it's definitely not 'very very top end' because that means it has almost zero information about anyone who is above-average (much less the extremes like 1 in 10k). And the Criticism section seems to accuse A-levels of a severe ceiling effect:

It has been suggested by The Department for Education that the high proportion of candidates who obtain grade A makes it difficult for universities to distinguish between the most able candidates.

Incidentally, notice the lowest grade: almost twice as many males as females.

Comment author: bramflakes 14 July 2014 11:38:19AM *  1 point [-]

I'm talking about Further Maths. The A grade for that is the only one with more boys than girls. It's much harder, and only 8,000 people take it compared to 60,000 for the standard Mathematics exam.

Then again, the ceiling still only looks to be the top 6-7% of the people taking math A-Levels. I think you're right.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 15 July 2014 09:41:40PM 1 point [-]

Percent passing is not very informative because those sitting the test have been preselected. According to this spreadsheet, 50% more boys take Maths and more than twice as many boys take further maths. Also, it claims that the A* rate is twice as high for boys, at both levels, though the A rate is the same (which is weird).

(the spreadsheet has several sheets, but the link should go to the correct one - gender)

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