31 July 2020: Seminar by Dr Robin Hankin, Mathematical Sciences, AUT

Title: Portfolio assessment: the end of dishonesty?

Where:  WT121
When: Friday July 31, 2020; 1-2 pm

Abstract: Portfolio assessment offers a number of academic and institutional benefits.  In this short non-technical discussion, I will present a case study of portfolio assessment in the field of elementary statistics.  Students are given the cue of “procure a small dataset from your everyday life and analyse it using the methods of this course”; students respond with a wide range of ingenious, entertaining and appropriate datasets and analyses.   Such portfolio assessment effectively eliminates academic dishonesty although it has disadvantages including a non-scalable assessment schedule.  Discussing portfolios reveals many further advantages over exam-based assessment which are readily transferable across numerical disciplines.

Bio:Robin Hankin is a mathematician specializing in computational statistics.  His first degree was in pure and applied mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge.  After working in the UK's Health and Safety Executive studying major industrial hazards, Robin returned to Cambridge for a PhD in fluid mechanics, specializing in stratified atmospheric diffusion.  He then worked at The University of Auckland as a lecturer in environmental science, publishing in the field of industrial risk assessment. After returning to Cambridge to study uncertainty in global climate change as a senior research associate, he is now a senior lecturer at AUT.  His current research includes game theory, the unit-sum constraint, and likelihood-based methods in the analysis of competitive situations.