This morning we woke up to discover a power cut. This meant: No electric kettle. We do have a gas stove, however, which we could light with the help of matches (the automatic ignition relies on mains power.) So we did eventually get some hot drinks. No toaster. No microwave. No hot toast, no porridge. […]
Continue readingMonth: August 2019
The lying dashboard (part 2)
Following-on from my suspicions as to the accuracy of my car’s reporting of my travel statistics, here’s another mystery. The length of my journey from home to work, as recorded by my odometer this morning, was 24.7 km. The length as recorded by Google Maps is 25.2 km. So, my odometer underreads. Or it did […]
Continue readingStudent evaluations of teaching effectiveness tell us nothing about teaching effectiveness
I thank my colleague Chris Lusk for bringing this paper by Uttl, White and Gonzalez to my attention. Many universities and polytechnics acquire Student Evaluation data on courses and teacher quality at the end of a course. There are different ways this can be done – here at The University of Waikato students are asked (online) […]
Continue readingThe lying dashboard
How accurate are our car speedometers? That’s well discussed., e.g. on this AA question forum. If the ‘expert’ here is correct, your car speedometer could over-read by as much as 10% + 4 km/h (which is quite a bit – if you are doing 45 km/h it might read 54.5 km/h, or if you are […]
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