Winsteps

The "Practical Rasch Measurement" course starts this Friday, Feb.3, 2006. It has 29 registrants - from 12 countries and 7 US states!! This is going to be a really exciting mix of experience and backgrounds. 4 or 5 registrants look to be old hands, perhaps hoping to pick up some new ideas or fill in some gaps, but most seem to be brand-new. It's been fun and challenging putting together the course material and assignments - now to see what happens when "the rubber meets the road" ....

A colleague writes: "I'm considering taking the Rasch course you are offering on-line on statistics.com. I have read Bond & Fox several times and almost all the papers in RMT and Rasch.org. I think I have an intermediate knowledge of Rasch theory. What I lack and very much need at the moment is some hands-on experience with Winsteps to solve my practical testing problems. Do you think this course can help me develop in this respect?"

My reply: "I am experimenting with this online format to replace the two-day Workshops that I have conducted for twenty years. The intention of the Course is to enable Rasch novices to perform routine analyses effectively. You may already have done most of the readings. There are also many practical analyses using Ministep. Participants are encouraged to perform their own analyses and report their progress on the Discussion Forum - I hope this works well. You may find that the Course is too elementary, but even experienced participants at my in-person two-day Workshops usually remark that they gain additional insights into the theory and practice of Rasch measurement. It will be exciting to discover what happens!"

Golf tournaments are a wonderful demonstration of Rasch methodology with rank-ordered data. The final 2005 USPGA measures and ranking are now at www.winsteps.com/golf2005.htm - If you want to experiment yourself, Winsteps and Facets control and data files are linked from that page. The new Golf year is about to get started - so the plan is to post the current Rasch measures (which are also the predictions) each week. Initially, the 2005 final ranking will be used as a dummy tournament. The first Tournament of 2006, the Mercedes, is limited to previous Tournament winners, so everyone not there will be given the rank of "equal last" (including Tiger Woods who is a no-show, etc.) - but this will be reviewed after a few more tournaments. Usually no-shows are merely ignored.

Please try this same methodology with your own sports interest. Sailing is at www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt154g.htm - and no doubt there will be a new round of controversy at the 2006 Winter Olympic Ice Skating! For the 2002 controversy, see www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt154a.htm