Scores for Adults Are Dropping on Tests of Basic Skills

Re:Scores for Adults Are Dropping on Tests of Basic Skills by Gigachad on Sunday December 15, 2024 @10:27PM (#42427762)

I guess you’d fail the reading comprehension part then. All the required info is in the question. You can’t just pull 5% from nowhere. There is an assertion that it’s 9%, the task is to identify and repeat the asserted value, not make up your own.

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Re:Scores for Adults Are Dropping on Tests of Basic Skills by hyperbrainer on Monday December 16, 2024 @03:47AM (#42429172)

But the text says "seems", not that it actually "becomes" soft at 9%. Depending on your view of language, whether the answer is there changes.

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Re:Scores for Adults Are Dropping on Tests of Basic Skills by Gigachad on Monday December 16, 2024 @03:16PM (#42434937)

“Seems” here being “you experience it as soft” since soft isn’t an absolute thing. Since there are no other mentions of percentages that are soft there isn’t really anything else to mix it up with.

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Re:Scores for Adults Are Dropping on Tests of Basic Skills by lesuorac on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @08:14AM (#42441084)

That line of thinking breaks down in the real world though.

Its like when some scientist reports they killed 70% of cancer cells in the lab and a news report comes out with scientists develop treatment for 70% of cancer.

You cannot just take "scientist reports they killed 70% of cancer cells in the lab" and then follow-up with a question of "what percent of cancer did the scientist cure?" and then use the only percentage you saw ("70%") as the answer. The information given wasn't not sufficient to answer the question asked; in a test scenario, sure make an assumption but in the real world just get clarification ...

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Re:Scores for Adults Are Dropping on Tests of Basic Skills by lesuorac on Monday December 16, 2024 @08:52AM (#42430937)

> All the required info is in the question.

I mean it's not though. The question is about "is soft" not "seems soft".

These slight of hands are pretty crucial to actually reading in the real world (or conversely, deceiving people).

It's like if you read a press release about how X is 120% better than Y. Judging from the press release, X is clearly better than Y but then if you actually do your own research you find for your workload X is actually 10% worse than Y.

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