Winsteps
Friday, August 19, 2005
The Power of Us
| "The Power of Us" was the cover headline of Business Week, June 20 2005. The subhead is "Mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business." Mass collaboration has certainly helped the development of Winsteps. For about 15 years, it was graduate students in University classrooms (and their Professors) who prompted the introduction of new features and reported bugs. Now it is the vast Internet community. Winsteps and Facets are being applied in innovative ways. Thousands of users are quick to make suggestions and report bugs. Everyone benefits. "A hypothesis has met its supreme test when it solves not only the problem it was designed to cover, but also the cognate problems that arise during further investigation." Odell Shepard (1923) "A Youth to Fortune and to Fame Unknown", Modern Philology, 20, 372. The same could be said about computer software. |  Business Week Cover Photo Illustration by David Rudes/BW |
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Winsteps capacity increasing
When we started on the PC-XT around 1983, our Rasch software had the capacity of 63 items and 254 persons. On a minicomputer, this increased to 225 items by 1500 people. Since then, the analyzable dataset size has steadily increased. In Winsteps 3.57, April 2005, the limit is 30,000+ items (as requested by DNA researchers) and 999,999 persons. But now two testing organizations have requested capacity of over 1 million persons. So the tested capacity of Winsteps 3.58, planned for later in August 2005, is 10 million persons. Analyzing those takes about 24 hours on a current PC . A testing organization has also requested that data files bigger than 4GB be processable. This should be actioned later in the year.
Ben Wright's 1980 Rasch program, BICAL, had a standard maximum capacity of 480 items by 480 persons - but it was circulated as source code, so each user recompiled it to their own requirements. Ben's own version had a capacity of at least 800 persons. The maximum possible, without rewriting the code, appears to have been 99,999 persons.
Ben Wright's 1980 Rasch program, BICAL, had a standard maximum capacity of 480 items by 480 persons - but it was circulated as source code, so each user recompiled it to their own requirements. Ben's own version had a capacity of at least 800 persons. The maximum possible, without rewriting the code, appears to have been 99,999 persons.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Models are Stupid
Patricia A. McLagan, 2004: "Every day, we as learning and performance practitioners meet new and often more complex challenges. No situation is exactly like the last. It would be great to have blueprints and guides – or even artificial intelligence programs to ensure we’ll be 100% successful. The reality is that our success relies on our personal ability to come up with the best strategies for the performance problems and opportunities we face. This, in turn, requires a mix of our own experience, analytical and creative thinking, and access to useful models for action."
The Rasch model isn't merely a measurement model, it's a model for action. It helps us arrange our thoughts so we can make orderly decisions. But it's also a warning system.
Tom Peters: "Measures should routinely produce Surprises (if not, discard them)."
If our analytical purpose was solely to confirm what we already know, then we would soon be replaced by robots. The better the measurement system, the more we know that the Surprises are real, not artifacts of the analysis, and also the more we are confident that the Surprises have not been lost in the decimal dust. But let's also remember to keep a sense of proportion. No model, including the Rasch model, is telling us the exact truth. In fact,
Tom Peters: "Models are incredibly Stupid (very rough approximations of reality): Make sure everyone understands that! If a system/measure gives you a stupid answer, it’s probably a stupid system/measure."
The Rasch model isn't merely a measurement model, it's a model for action. It helps us arrange our thoughts so we can make orderly decisions. But it's also a warning system.
Tom Peters: "Measures should routinely produce Surprises (if not, discard them)."
If our analytical purpose was solely to confirm what we already know, then we would soon be replaced by robots. The better the measurement system, the more we know that the Surprises are real, not artifacts of the analysis, and also the more we are confident that the Surprises have not been lost in the decimal dust. But let's also remember to keep a sense of proportion. No model, including the Rasch model, is telling us the exact truth. In fact,
Tom Peters: "Models are incredibly Stupid (very rough approximations of reality): Make sure everyone understands that! If a system/measure gives you a stupid answer, it’s probably a stupid system/measure."
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Telling stories
A quote from the website of my favorite business guru, Tom Peters
“We are in the twilight of a society based on data. As information and intelligence become the domain of computers, society will place more value on the one human ability that cannot be automated: emotion. Imagination, myth, ritual - the language of emotion - will affect everything from our purchasing decisions to how we work with others. Companies will thrive on the basis of their stories and myths. Companies will need to understand that their products are less important than their stories.”
Rolf Jensen, Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies
Rasch Measurement Transactions thrives on stories. My plan is to add more stories to the Winsteps documentation and support material. And how about "Adjutant's Call" which is this midi file or this MP3 file for the Winsteps Bugle Call?
“We are in the twilight of a society based on data. As information and intelligence become the domain of computers, society will place more value on the one human ability that cannot be automated: emotion. Imagination, myth, ritual - the language of emotion - will affect everything from our purchasing decisions to how we work with others. Companies will thrive on the basis of their stories and myths. Companies will need to understand that their products are less important than their stories.”
Rolf Jensen, Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies
Rasch Measurement Transactions thrives on stories. My plan is to add more stories to the Winsteps documentation and support material. And how about "Adjutant's Call" which is this midi file or this MP3 file for the Winsteps Bugle Call?
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
The doer alone learneth
Trevor Bond is enlisting my help with some technicalities as he and Christine Fox work on the next edition of their excellent book "Applying the Rasch Model" (Erlbaum). "Applying the Rasch Model" is not bed-time reading. It needs active thought. As usual, it's some of the "simplest" things that are the most challenging. "The doer alone learneth," Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). So, I'm learning a lot as Trevor works through his introductory material. "Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind." (Dale Carnegie)
