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gwern 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: 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.

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