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jamonwindeyer

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ATAR/Scaling Questions
« on: March 01, 2016, 11:35:51 pm »
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ATAR/SCALING Q+A THREAD

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What is this thread for?
If you have any questions about things like scaling, ranks, moderation or alignment - This is the place to ask! Why spend hours reading NESA documents when we can do it for you ;) 👌

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« Last Edit: March 28, 2018, 12:27:00 am by jamonwindeyer »

bethjomay

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2016, 04:52:51 pm »
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Hey Jamon! I was just wondering if you know how much your class's performance can affect your scaling? Some of my classes are pretty good but some (especially physics) are all pretty slack and don't really care about their atar that much except for me!
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RuiAce

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2016, 04:55:04 pm »
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Hey Jamon! I was just wondering if you know how much your class's performance can affect your scaling? Some of my classes are pretty good but some (especially physics) are all pretty slack and don't really care about their atar that much except for me!
Moderation is dependent on three factors:

1. Your rank in the cohort.
2. The relative mark differences in the cohort.
3. The top mark in the final exam. (Which you wouldn't know.)

Without information on this it is hard to say for sure what will happen.


Note that the actual raw internal marks THEMSELVES do absolutely nothing. It is only the relative mark differences and your rank that decide what happens. This is because schools that set harder assessments will be disadvantaged otherwise.
I think that if you're coming first (or near first) you won't be affected by scaling. If you are first by a lot (i.e. there's a massive gap between you and second, you are getting 90% while the person coming second is getting 40% you'll be considered as an outlier)

I may be wrong, but it's better to ask Jamon (I was putting my thought out there just to help you out)
That's not exactly false tbh but way too blurry.

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2016, 04:55:17 pm »
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Hey Jamon! I was just wondering if you know how much your class's performance can affect your scaling? Some of my classes are pretty good but some (especially physics) are all pretty slack and don't really care about their atar that much except for me!

I think that if you're coming first (or near first) you won't be affected by scaling. If you are first by a lot (i.e. there's a massive gap between you and second, you are getting 90% while the person coming second is getting 40% you'll be considered as an outlier)

I may be wrong, but it's better to ask Jamon (I was putting my thought out there just to help you out)

jamonwindeyer

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2016, 05:00:38 pm »
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Hey Jamon! I was just wondering if you know how much your class's performance can affect your scaling? Some of my classes are pretty good but some (especially physics) are all pretty slack and don't really care about their atar that much except for me!

Hey Beth!

Okay so Rui alluded to some of this stuff, I'll give you the short and sort of inaccurate version, the proper thing is in the article above!

Big question, and all the details are in the article above. However, the short (and slightly inaccurate) answer is, the better your class is, the lower your rank can be without adverse effect). Basically, if you are ranked 1st in a less than ideal class, it won't affect you, because you are first. If you are ranked low in a less than ideal class, then that is a bit more troublesome. This is because your rank plays a large role in determining your moderated school assessment mark.

If you are 4th, you (roughly speaking) will get somewhere near the 4th highest HSC Exam mark in your cohort. If you are 11th, you'll get somewhere near the 11th, etc etc. So, the lower your rank, the more you rely on your classmates to perform. In actual fact, your mark won't match exactly with the rank, everything is scaled to maintain mark separation as alluded to by Rui, but it's a good way to think about it nonetheless).

Of course BOSTES has limits in place, this is not going to cost you like 30 marks. But it would be a noticeable impact.

Your aim should be to perform at your absolute best. Your class' performance just means you have to work a little harder yourself. As long as your rank is solid and/or you really smash out your HSC, then you'll have no adverse effects whatsoever (besides an annoying class driving you nuts)  ;)

EDIT: None of this affects your HSC exam mark, that is yours alone, it only affects your moderated school assessment mark!

bethjomay

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2016, 05:02:52 pm »
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Ok awesome, that makes more sense now! Haha, thank you!
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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2016, 05:09:01 pm »
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You know how they say things like "your rank matters more than your mark"? How come some people who get like 80% in their school assessments end up getting band 6 in certain subjects?

Apparently I heard that if you miss your HSC exams for any reason (such as illness) then they make your school mark, your actual HSC mark

Funny story here (a bit irrelevant to the thread) but I remember a teacher at my school telling me that many years ago, there was some boardofstudies officer who apparently got fired (I can't remember where this  happened though and I can't remember what happened exactly) and she had all the HSC exam papers on top of her car and drove off and all of the exam papers started flying everywherev LOL. They ended up calculating the students' HSC mark via their school assessment mark. Must've been really bad for them LOL

I heard apparently that if you do courses with an "outside tutor" (must be one that is suitable according to the boardofstudies) then they calculate your mark according to how well you performed since it's only a one student course (out of school). If you get 90 in your school assessments and 96 in your actual HSC exam, then you'll get 93 total. Is this true?

RuiAce

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #7 on: July 21, 2016, 05:12:11 pm »
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You know how they say things like "your rank matters more than your mark"? How come some people who get like 80% in their school assessments end up getting band 6 in certain subjects?

Apparently I heard that if you miss your HSC exams for any reason (such as illness) then they make your school mark, your actual HSC mark

Funny story here (a bit irrelevant to the thread) but I remember a teacher at my school telling me that many years ago, there was some boardofstudies officer who apparently got fired (I can't remember where this  happened though and I can't remember what happened exactly) and she had all the HSC exam papers on top of her car and drove off and all of the exam papers started flying everywherev LOL. They ended up calculating the students' HSC mark via their school assessment mark. Must've been really bad for them LOL

I heard apparently that if you do courses with an "outside tutor" (must be one that is suitable according to the boardofstudies) then they calculate your mark according to how well you performed since it's only a one student course (out of school). If you get 90 in your school assessments and 96 in your actual HSC exam, then you'll get 93 total. Is this true?
Because:
a) Who said your rank had to be shit if your mark in assessments is 80%
b) The whole point of moderation is to eliminate the fact that some schools will set harder assessment tasks. Moderation takes your exam marks (which are not biased, because everyone sits the same final exam) and overlaps it onto your school raw marks, however keeping the ranks preserved and parabolically distributed to reflect the raw mark differences.
_______________

As for outside tuition.

Yes. Because you have no other student to be moderated with.

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2016, 05:20:22 pm »
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Because:
a) Who said your rank had to be shit if your mark in assessments is 80%
b) The whole point of moderation is to eliminate the fact that some schools will set harder assessment tasks. Moderation takes your exam marks (which are not biased, because everyone sits the same final exam) and overlaps it onto your school raw marks, however keeping the ranks preserved and parabolically distributed to reflect the raw mark differences.
_______________

As for outside tuition.

Yes. Because you have no other student to be moderated with.

Apparently if you are getting 80% for any course, you know 80% of the course. If you are getting 90% you are getting 90% of the course so wouldn't it be weird if you just got 80% then all of a sudden scaling brings it up to a 90%? (I'm talking about tests of mediocre difficulty, not hard, not easy)

If you go to a school with literally no band 6's and you get 100% and the second highest is like 20% then what happens here?

That's kinda stupid, especially for a high scaling subject like MX1 or MX2, you should at least get scaled higher since it's MX1 or MX2 (as in your internal assessments must be dragged higher if you are doing a difficult course by yourself because it's kinda unfair to get 80% in a difficult course and not get scaled to 90%)

RuiAce

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2016, 05:22:59 pm »
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Apparently if you are getting 80% for any course, you know 80% of the course. If you are getting 90% you are getting 90% of the course so wouldn't it be weird if you just got 80% then all of a sudden scaling brings it up to a 90%? (I'm talking about tests of mediocre difficulty, not hard, not easy)

If you go to a school with literally no band 6's and you get 100% and the second highest is like 20% then what happens here?

That's kinda stupid, especially for a high scaling subject like MX1 or MX2, you should at least get scaled higher since it's MX1 or MX2 (as in your internal assessments must be dragged higher if you are doing a difficult course by yourself because it's kinda unfair to get 80% in a difficult course and not get scaled to 90%)
What kind of blasphemy is this and what is its basis  :o
Unless it's just a figure of speech or something.

Well, if second highest is 20%, what is first highest? There's no mark difference here.

No. It is very much fair. Especially since I have rarely heard of one-to-one tuition students getting 100 raw in the final exam.
(Maths is one of those subjects that you can only state rank if your raw mark is at least 99)
State ranks are NOT based off your internal marks at ALL. ONLY the final exam mark.

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #10 on: July 21, 2016, 05:30:03 pm »
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What kind of blasphemy is this and what is its basis  :o
Unless it's just a figure of speech or something.

Well, if second highest is 20%, what is first highest? There's no mark difference here.

No. It is very much fair. Especially since I have rarely heard of one-to-one tuition students getting 100 raw in the final exam.
(Maths is one of those subjects that you can only state rank if your raw mark is at least 99)
State ranks are NOT based off your internal marks at ALL. ONLY the final exam mark.

That's what a teacher at my school said. If you scored 84% in your triginometry test, you understand 84% of everything in trigonometry, etc, you get what I'm talking about don't you?

There's an 80% difference

What does raw mark mean?

Then how are state ranks decided then?

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #11 on: July 21, 2016, 05:32:31 pm »
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That's what a teacher at my school said. If you scored 84% in your triginometry test, you understand 84% of everything in trigonometry, etc, you get what I'm talking about don't you?

There's an 80% difference

What does raw mark mean?

Then how are state ranks decided then?
They're being relative lol. Exams aren't just about knowing your content they're also about being able to apply them.

What, so internals wise 2nd place got 20% and first place got 100%?
Or are you saying in the final exam 2nd place got 20% and 1st place got 100%

Raw mark - Your actual exam mark. Without ANYTHING that is a synonym to the word "scaling".

State ranks - Whoever gets the best raw mark in the final exam gets the state rank. (It's harder when too many people get the same raw mark)

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #12 on: July 21, 2016, 05:38:03 pm »
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They're being relative lol. Exams aren't just about knowing your content they're also about being able to apply them.

What, so internals wise 2nd place got 20% and first place got 100%?
Or are you saying in the final exam 2nd place got 20% and 1st place got 100%

Raw mark - Your actual exam mark. Without ANYTHING that is a synonym to the word "scaling".

State ranks - Whoever gets the best raw mark in the final exam gets the state rank. (It's harder when too many people get the same raw mark)

Internal wise because that's when scaling comes into play (I think)

Then don't they do tiebreakers (i.e. check their internals). I can't remember what happens

Also for the kids who are sitting a course via an outside tutor, they should just tell their teacher/tutor that they should make the exams easier so then they are more likely to get a band 6 lol. Might not work though but who knows

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #13 on: July 21, 2016, 05:40:46 pm »
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Internal wise because that's when scaling comes into play (I think)

Then don't they do tiebreakers (i.e. check their internals). I can't remember what happens

Also for the kids who are sitting a course via an outside tutor, they should just tell their teacher/tutor that they should make the exams easier so then they are more likely to get a band 6 lol. Might not work though but who knows
Internals wise if first place and second place are disparate by a massive margin of 80%

The reported internal mark will be quite strange. First place will get whatever the top exam mark was, but second place may be heaps behind.

E.g. final exam: 1st gets 96 raw, 2nd gets 94 raw
Moderated school mark could be 1st gets 96 raw, 2nd gets 90 raw or even 80 raw

Final exam: 1st gets 96 raw, 2nd gets 40 raw
Moderated school mark could just be 1st gets 96 raw, 2nd gets 34 raw


Yeah I'm not sure about the intricacies of state rank either.


No, no I don't get why they should get easier exams. I have no idea about how that's fair; just cause you get tutored you get easier exams.

jamonwindeyer

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Re: ATAR/Scaling Questions
« Reply #14 on: July 21, 2016, 07:18:23 pm »
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Then don't they do tiebreakers (i.e. check their internals). I can't remember what happens

The process, from BOSTES:

If students are equal on the highest HSC marks in a course, then the following process is used to determine the recipient(s):
- take an average of each student's examination mark and assessment mark after alignment to performance bands, each to one decimal place
- take an average of each student's examination mark and assessment mark before alignment to performance bands, each to two decimal places
- if an extension course, use the marks awarded for other courses in the subject area.


Also for the kids who are sitting a course via an outside tutor, they should just tell their teacher/tutor that they should make the exams easier so then they are more likely to get a band 6 lol. Might not work though but who knows

Those students would get absolutely wrecked in the HSC when the difficulty becomes standard again. That, and BOSTES would catch them out, I've heard tales of it happening before  ;)