Re: What IS "Social Media"??

On Tue, 24 Feb 2026 21:14:17 +1100, Daniel70 wrote:

> In my situation (1983'ish) I was running the Examination Cell for an
> Australian Army TaFE Electronics Wing, so Stats were kept on each
> question used in End of Subject Exams to determine how HARD each
> Question was i.e. how many got each question Correct and then a second
> figure compared how many of the Smarties (Top 30%, I think) got it
> correct compared to how many of "Dummies" group got the question
> correct.
> 
> Those two figures, Overall Correct v Difference Correct, where then used
> to determine how DIFFICULT each Exam was .... and, if need by, the Marks
> attained could be adjusted.
> 
> STATICS .... made for computers .... or COMPUTERS ... made for statics!!

When I was in college I worked summers at the New York State Dept. of 
Education. NY has statewide Regents examinations for most high school 
subjects and the exams are created from a pool of questions using 
historical data on the difficulty to get the expected curve. Most of the 
number crunching was done with Friden SRWs.

http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev_en/frd_srw/

Usually they got the desired results but a couple of times they had to 
make adjustments after failing half the state's students. 

The SRW did not have divide by zero protection and would diligently try to 
get a result until you unplugged it. This was the mid-'60s and the 
department had the usual bureaucratic lag in adopting those new fangled 
computer things.