ATAR/Study Score Prediction...compare to actual on 16th :D

[max payne]

What about for further maths? whats considered the harder exam?

[Special At Specialist]

Good luck bazza hope you get this

[nerdgasm]

What about for further maths? whats considered the harder exam?

For Further Maths, it's a bit different to the cases of Methods and Biology that were discussed.

That's because for Methods and Bio, the weighting reflects the number of marks on each exam (Exam 2 is out of 80 and Exam 1 is out of 40 for Methods, so Exam 2 gets weighted twice as much. and for Biology, both exams have 75 marks each, so they are weighted equally).

However, for Further, Exam 1 is out of 40, and Exam 2 is out of 60, but both are weighted equally (33% each, according to the VCE Assessment Handbook), so based on that information, since the standard deviation of Exam 2 is higher, each mark lost on Exam 2 is actually worth less than a mark on Exam 1.(so 40/40 and 59/60 beats 39/40 and 60/60)

 

[thushan]

JDog, Thushan and pi, for what it's worth, I think the reason why losing marks on Maths Exam 2 is worse than losing marks on Maths Exam 1 is because Exam 2 tends to be harder, thus reducing the standard deviation (why exactly, I'm not sure), so each mark lost is a greater portion of the standard deviations lost.

If the two exams were of equal difficulty, we might see something like this:

Exam 1, Mean = 20, SD = 10
Exam 2, Mean = 40, SD = 20.   

Now, each mark lost from Exam 1 is 0.1 of a SD, and each mark lost from Exam 2 is initially 0.05 of an SD. But Exam 2 is weighted double, so each mark lost turns out to be 0.1 of your final weighted score.

However, because Exam 2 is generally more difficult than Exam 1, we get something more like this:

Exam 1, Mean = 20, SD = 11
Exam 2, Mean = 40, SD = 18

So, each mark lost from Exam 1 is 1/11th of an SD, and each mark lost from Exam 2 is 1/18th of an SD, but is doubled to become 1/9th. Therefore, a person who gets 0/40 and 80/80 will do better than a person who gets 40/40 and 40/80. Note that in both these cases, the mean does not matter.

To give an actual example, I'll use my Methods scores from last year.
For Exam 1, I got 32/40, which was +0.95 SD's, multiplied by 0.22 (the weighting), to give 0.21
For Exam 2, I got 74/80, which was +1.78 SD's, multiplied by 0.44  to give 0.78. So, we'll say I have a final exam score of 0.99

Had I lost 6 more marks on Exam 1, and fullmarked Exam 2 (so still 14 marks lost in total), my final score would be around 0.22(0.42) + 0.44(2.10) = 1.017. Had I fullmarked Exam 1, and lost 8 more marks on Exam 2, my final score would be around 0.22(1.65) + 0.44(1.34) = 0.954.

Anyways, tl;dr, if you have to lose a certain number of marks, better to do it on an easier exam, where the standard deviation is higher (edited, I initially wrote lower), and each mark is worth 'less'.

Yup, that was my point.
Except low standard deviation does not necessarily mean a "hard" exam. It just means that all the scores tend to be bunched up rather than spread out. A low standard deviation pretty much means an exam that is either too easy (all the scores are bunched up towards the high end) or too hard (the scores are bunched up towards the low end).

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience

[max payne]

What about for further maths? whats considered the harder exam?

For Further Maths, it's a bit different to the cases of Methods and Biology that were discussed.

That's because for Methods and Bio, the weighting reflects the number of marks on each exam (Exam 2 is out of 80 and Exam 1 is out of 40 for Methods, so Exam 2 gets weighted twice as much. and for Biology, both exams have 75 marks each, so they are weighted equally).

However, for Further, Exam 1 is out of 40, and Exam 2 is out of 60, but both are weighted equally (33% each, according to the VCE Assessment Handbook), so based on that information, since the standard deviation of Exam 2 is higher, each mark lost on Exam 2 is actually worth less than a mark on Exam 1.(so 40/40 and 59/60 beats 39/40 and 60/60)

sweeeeeeet, got 40 for exam 1:)....no idea for exam 2 though:/ lololol

[werdna]

Looks like we forgot about this thread? I'll start off!

English - 42
Legal Studies - 43
History Revolutions - 40
Business Management - 35
Latin - 15

ATAR - 90.50

Got 4 points higher in English, the same in Legal, 3 points lower in History, 1 point higher in BM and 3 points higher in Latin. And 2 points higher for the ATAR.. feeling pretty good about it all!

[thushan]

Scaled my prediction of englang by 15 O.O
Got what I predicted for spesh
Scaled physics pred by 5
Chem scaled by 2
German scaled by 6.

[max payne]

Further Maths:
Rank: 1
Exam 1: 40/40
Exam 2: 53-57/60

Predicted SS: 43-48?

haha underestimated my performance on exam 2 I think. I guess VCAA arnt as harsh markers as everyone makes them out to be...

[Furbob]

90.4+ and will be die happy....

*runs away*

but seriously

English - 36+
Accounting - 36+
Further - 38+ - dropped 5 on exam 1, around 5 on exam 2?
Japanese SL - 38+
Methods - go away
Uni Jap - 5.0 (was feeling alright after semester 1  then semester 2 assignments + VCE gen con preparation did not mix well.... got a HD and D respectively)

*being a tad conservative here/expecting the worst?*

heh, now the next step of worries is... WILL FURBOB GO TO MELB UNI? was quite over my expectations and pleased

was a bit let down by Accounting considering it was equal favourite with Japanese but ended up being my worst subject after scaling and probably didnt live up to my potential for Japanese but anything 40+ in a LOTE is good enough.

[chrisjb]

Okay guys, here goes:

Top 4

English 39 --> 38
Economics 40 --> 42
International Studies 39 --> 42
Legal Studies 43 (from last year)

Bottom 2

Literature 35 --> 36
Further Maths 37 --> 35

Aggregate: 172

ATAR: 94.50

My predictions weren't bad

              PRED  REAL
ENG         39      40
LIT           35      38
I.S.          39       43
ECO         40       40
MAF         37        39

ATAR      94.5     96.35

[pi]

Bio (done already): 42
English: 38
Chem: 43
Methods: 40
Spesh: 42
Physics: 32

ATAR: 97.85

Hoped to do better (the dream was 99.15), but "such is life"

Bio: couldn't have got that wrong
English: Higher
Chem: Over-predicted - too cocky
Methods: Higher
Spesh: Expected way too much here
Physics: Pleasantly surprised
ATAR: 1.5 higher than expected (exceeded the 99.15 dream too!)

English Lang: rank 1 SACs (94/100, 96/100 in a moderately strong cohort), and i would hazard a guess at ~55-60/75 in the exam. So...38-40.

That's a load of bs right there, pretty sure you'll be easily 45+ Too much modesty

Got that right too!

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience

[WhoTookMyUsername]

Biology:

Probably rank 15 - 20 / 100 raw MHS (high A/low A+ average) -> in school standardisation -> out of school standardisation; Mid -> high A+
Exam 1: 70
Exam 2: 67-74 -  i think probably 70

So hopefully a 50

With the amount of time i've invested into biology; and the current state of my 1/2s, i would be disappointed with anything less than a 50 (seeing as Bio is top 4, each aggregate point is significant).

accurate in the thread, though afterwards i changed my prediction to 49 in my sig

[jane1234]

I'm trying to be a pessimist so I'm not disappointed on the 16th... but I'm sadly an optimist:

Methods (2010): 50
English: 41-45
Bio: 42-43
Chem: 43-45
Spesh: 43-45 (DAMN YOU EXAM 2!)
Art: 40

ATAR: 99.20 -- I know that would still be amazing, but I would have liked higher... oh well - to quote a certain AN member, "such is life".

English: Accurate
Bio: 1 point higher
Chem: Accurate
Spesh: 1 point lower
Art: 3 points higher  :O

Meh, pretty accurate overall. I put down the lower ATAR for those ranges, but I think the spesh scaling made it much higher than ATARcalc predicted...

[luken93]

arghhh just gonna do it for comparison on the 16th only, actually haven't thought about them for about 10 days!

Min (Hopefully)
English: 41
Methods: 42
Spesh: 45
Chem: 44
Bus Man (2010): 47
= 99.15

Max (Hopefully)
English: 44
Methods: 45
Spesh: 47
Chem: 46
Bus Man (2010): 47
= 99.70

These are my predictions that have hopefully been somewhat backed by solutions, feel free to have your opinions but this is my answer to the topic...

Not bad on the optimistic bet...apart from spesh, woops.

[MJay1993]

                PRED(from my sig. before results came out)   
Eng.         40                                                               
Methods   25     
German   35           
Studio     40       
Media      40       
PE           Couldn't change at all

ATAR      96.15   

                 REAL
Eng.          42
German     34
Methods    34
Studio       50
Media        40
PE             50

ATAR        98.95

Seriously underestimated myself for the most part