Phase 3: Profit !

Exams!

One of my friends is really upset about a cert examination (MCSE, CCNA, LCC etc), which he took recently. Then I told him it’s okay, as these exams are inherently biased.

From the perspective of an exam authority, to setup a “Professional Certification Exam“, what makes a (new) exam successful?

1. The certified people perform better.

2. The exam is accepted by the existing personnel in the industry – otherwise they’ll reject the exam due to their vested interests. This is where exemption of certain criteria for existing personnel comes in when a new exam is created.

3. Getting certified will grant a candidate a better chance of being hired. The incentive for applicants to take the exam is to stand out from the group.

4. The exam provides a way for management to justify their hiring decisions, as they believe a certified employee is a safe choice.

Due to the self-reinforced loop of 1-3, a reputation will be built for the certification.

As we can tell, only reason 1 is essential for the benefits of the employer and employee, and the others are purely for marketing purposes.

1. The result will always be biased toward false negative (consider a qualified candidate who fails), rather than false positive, (granting a non-qualified candidate a pass). This is because false positives harm the exams reputation, while false negatives do not, (and also grant another exam fee -> $$) (For reason 1).

2. Biased questions which favour the inner circle will be asked in the exam, so that the existing personnel have an advantage over the new comer, to protect their privileged position. (For reason 2)

3. The exam has to have a high fail rate for new comers. Think of guilds in RL 16th-17th century, the age of Adam Smith. Limiting the number of apprentices for a master craftsman, thus restricting workers from entering the industry, to enforce the scarcity of workmen and protect the wage of “the professionals”. (For reason 3)

Ironically, the more people fail the exam; the more valuable it becomes to pass.

So my advice for my friend was, don’t be too upset by the “exam game”. It’s meant to be hard, and that is exactly the reason why you take it.

If the Odds are good, and there are things you can do to get a pass, take it. Otherwise, don’t bother.

P.s I am honored to have Zupa edited this article, I want to show my gratitude for his generous.

Until Next Time,

Zekta

Thoughts and Blogosphere

Quite busy this week, had been trying to put myself together, but no luck…
There are some interested topic (experiments) reported last week, last talk about it

Begging

Seth concluded his experiment on begging

I must say most of us won’t take the time to do such an experiment.

Leveling an alt named after beggar, leveling it 40level and begs for 8 hours? I’ll never do it myself…

It spring lots of thought for me (Yet-Another-Thing-Want-To-Blog)… but I will not risk this idea from not publishing, I’ll just make a short list instead L

Here is a short list:

1. We tend to have a implicit thoughts about old people (See Reference), which also apply to beggars (IRL) as well. Do our despite for beggar really work as rational, or a comfortable (defensive) excuses for not helping (Social’s Subroutine)?
2. Reasoning if a person is indeed need of help before giving out the gold, seems pretty make sense to me, it’ll be much better than, “I’ll give you gold, since you asked”(Is the mount necessary is another question)
3. Is helping others that bad? E.g. the example Larisa talk about in comment a IRL’s friend first character on your realm, will you give them gold said (10g for first 10 level’s training fee)? Consider the fact, You earn money much faster than them (Since you have a 80 toons).

I didn’t make up my mind on this one yet. While a green goblin in my mind said “Don’t this will encourage slacking, and why don’t they earn their own gold?” and a pink-haired Gnome would say “It’s only cost you for selling a glyph, and they need to collect the trash on low level area, for at least 30 minutes”

I don’t know…

I used to give little change to old ladies on street, but not now, I keep thinking about it though. For the old ladies are picking cardboard box, and recycling beverage can. I know their life is harsh, that’s 160 beverage cans worth $1 USD.

The Apprentice

I love this series of blog from Gevlon I must say.

http://dalarangardens.blogspot.com/

from the first glance of the post

http://dalarangardens.blogspot.com/2009/07/mishaps-of-misguided-apprentice.html

I clicked the subscribe button on my Google reader

Gnome – Check (I grow up as a gnome mage)

Mage – Check

Sense of Humor – Check

Sarcastic – Check

Keep the good work coming, Ydraisa

Business

It had been boring recently, continuous on glyph business. Nothing special other than 2.6k /week (Try to avoid using the gold/day for weekend sells much better). With 10-30 mins play time per day on Auction Hall, I guess it’s more than enough for me. Saving up for my level Alt… (Should be able to meet my 20k milestone this few days.)

Reference:
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageism
In Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt’s surprise hit of 2005, the study of hidden (or “implicit”) ageism was brought out of the psychologist’s laboratory and into the TV studio. Levitt described how, in the US version of The Weakest Link, contestants’ voting decisions were, on average, biased against older panelists. At the stage of the game where it is in participants’ interests to vote for poor performers, older people were likely to be chosen even when younger adults had performed worse. But when contestants would benefit by choosing top-performing rivals (to eliminate the competition), they tended to choose lower-performing, older contestants. Subconsciously, the panelists simply did not want to be around older people.^[27]

P.s a post about undercover economist is still on my pending list… didn’t finish the book yet thought ;P

Thoughts and Blogs

Added About me link, and planning to write yet another pages about the blogs and invite guest posts. Had a discussion with Seth a month before, and I didn’t expect many people would like to become guest blogger instead of having their own blog before. Anyway, asking won’t harm I guess.

Had been busying tidy things up at the blog, trying to get a contact form working but no joy.
(After half-day of working on this, It’s the permalink problem. And after I hacked the plugin, it worked…)

Zupa offered helps on my writing, which I am honored for that. Sorry mate, that I didn’t come close to have a piece of work done recently (laziness, my bad)

I am keep messing around with new drafts…
My excuse is that I got my copy of a great book, and new ideas had booming in my head.

Excuse of Infrequent Updates

Blogosphere

Blogosphere Meme

There are discussion on Failure Stories.

I don’t have a strong opinion on that, and I can’t really think of reasons that people hate Gevlon so much. IMHO, Gevlon is just honest and brave to speak out what most of us really do. Some of his opinion may be too extreme, but what I saw on others respond, is rather irrational at all. (I don’t want to go into detail and quote their line here)

I am with Larisa on these…

Holidays

Seth is taking a break, and Miy decided that it’s time to quit blogging to get some real life action. I would kinda miss them. (Watching Seth’s updates really encourage me to keep things up )
Seeing fellows stop blogging is kinda make me sad… Like one of your favorite novel ended

Updates: I write the note in the morning, and at the afternoon, Seth is back posting again. That’s really mades me looking like an idots , nevermind, I am happy…