Robo-graders
Robo-graders, or software that grades essays have been there for some time. But how good/useful is an algorithm to assess the quality of writing? Les Perelman, a critic, says these algorithms don’t understand the meaning (obviously) and just use certain metrics like “length and the presence of pretentious language”: “The fallacy underlying this approach is confusing association with causation. A person makes the observation that many smart college professors wear tweed jackets and then believes that if she wears a tweed jacket, she will be a smart college professor.” Further, Perelman says that once kids know (or guess) how the algorithm works, they will write to suit the algorithm without worrying about content! A couple of students at Harvard demonstrated just that by writing an application that generates gibberish and yet gets rated highly by the algorithm. Then again, as Chaitanya Ramineni, an ETS (Educational Testing Service) researcher, says, “human scoring suffers...