Hedging in Data Commentaries

Image reference

You are a teaching assistant for an introductory biology course with a total enrollment of 150. Exams are usually given in the evening to avoid losing valuable class time. Because some students have evening commitments, a makeup exam is always given. The professor has noticed a big discrepancy between the scores of the last regular exam and those of the makeup exam. Because you administered the last makeup exam, you have been asked to offer an explanation. You have prepared the data in Table 16. Now write a data commentary, either as a formal report or an e-mail message to your professor.

Table 16: A Comparison of the Regular and Makeup Exam

Items	Regular exam	Makeup exam
Average score (out of 100) Time administered Difficulty of questions Number of students Proctor Board examples Room environment	86 Wednesday, 7:00 p.m. average 125 professor yes about 20C	72 Friday, 4:00 p.m. average 25 teaching assistant no (not considered necessary) about 28C

Dear Professor,

I hope this email finds you well. I am writing this email to present the result of my analysis on the discrepancy observed in the two tests based on the above table.

It is clear that there is a big gap between the average scores of the regular exam and the makeup exam. The first thing that I would like to mention is the possibility of the fact that, some of the students who attended the make-up exam were not well-prepared for the regular exam and chances are that they could not get fully prepared in the last two days.

Since you were the proctor of the regular exam, the student have benefited from your help, hints and of course the board examples during the exams, whereas I did not answer to any questions based on regulations.

In the regular exam there were 125 students attending the test whereas in the makeup exam only 25 students were taking the test. I don’t want to accuse anyone of misbehavior during the exam; however, since you were the only proctor of the exam, the high number of students could increase the chance of cheating in the regular exam.

Finally, since the room's temperature was considerably higher in the makeup exam, that might also be a good reason for the less efficient performance of the students.

I hope these reasons would be convincing and justify the discrepancy between the two exams.

Should you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best regards,

TA