I read an interesting article today about how the International Baccalaureate (IB) program for high school education decided to cancel end-of-year tests for students and use a statistical model to predict final grades during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an online chemistry tutor for high school students in different programs, IB included, as well as a data scientist, I am a little shocked at how little transparency existed in the process to assign final grades to students. It has obviously caused confusion and distress, and led to offers from colleges and universities being rescinded, which should not be a desired consequence. This got me wondering — what kind of questions did the IB administrators and the unnamed company contracted to build the statistical model ask before releasing the final grades? I’m outlining at least some of the discussions I would make sure to have were I working in this team to solve this challenging problem.
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Learning and growing, currently in data science