Brief reflection on tests

While taking a test this morning for my community college class, I suddenly began wondering about tests generally. What are they for? And how do they influence our lives?

These seem like important questions, particularly since tests seem to pop up all the time. To secure a drivers license for example, I had to pass a test. Tests like this are pass/fail; the score is relevant only to the extent that it places your performance above  or below threshold.

To earn a particular grade in the class I'm taking, I'll have to secure a particular average score on the tests the professor assigns. These tests are also pass/fail, but ones for which it generally pays to put greater distance between yourself and the pass/fail threshold. In other words, you can achieve a "pass" without accruing the same benefit as achieving a still-higher mark. Accordingly, some people operate on the margin, in that they'll figure out how hard they have to work to secure a particular grade and work no harder; others try to achieve maximum points on everything. Finally, some aim for a perfect score, but settle if the final outcome is acceptable.

The thing about tests is that they don't exactly measure capacity so much as one's performance at a given moment, under a particular set of circumstances. So if you get tested on an "off" day, the results probably will not match what you might have done when "on." Perhaps it's like running a time-trial at the start of a season; the test measures performance at the moment, under a set of circumstance, but not how one will perform at the championship event. The time-trial is certainly useful, in that it provides some feed-back about what is strong and what is not; but it seems a limited tool for judging how a person will do down the road.

So tests seem to have utility, but more as a measure of where you are rather than where you will go. It's easy to overlook this fact when tests are used to determine your grade, or indeed what you can do with your future...I do it frequently enough. Whether you achieve a good mark or otherwise, at the end of the day it seems important to remember what a test really measures and what it doesn't. Something to think about, anyway.

Happy Thursday, friends :)