A Stitch in Haste

This is how a nightmare begins:

It is with regret that I inform you that during the grading of the February 2005 California Bar Exam, several bar examination answer books to Question number 6 were stolen from a grader's car.

Bottom line, the bar examiners are "imputing" a score for the missing questions via two methods (and taking the higher score). Translation: They're making scores up.

Not to discuss my own bar exam experiences (modesty prevents me) other than to say I passed, but obviously most aspiring lawyers, review courses notwithstanding, go into the bar exam strong on some subjects and weak on others. If, for a particular test-taker, the missing question fell into one of those two extremes, then the "imputed score" might very well be sufficiently inaccurate to misrepresent the test-taker's true score.

Here would have been a much better approach: Unless it was mathematically impossible for the test-taker to have passed regardless of his score on the stolen question (i.e., give them a perfect score on the stolen question), then pass them. But, as a stopgap measure, require the affected test-takers to take free Continuing Education classes in the tested subject or subjects during their first year as a lawyer. This way no one who would have passed anyway receives a failing grade because their "imputed score" was too low, and no one who would have failed but for their knowledge of the topic examined on the missing question is allowed to become a (less-than-competent) lawyer. No Type I errors, no Type II errors, no lawsuits (you just know that there are going to be lawsuits by the affected students who fail).

And does this fiasco remind anyone besides me of the Census Bureau's blatantly unconstitutional proposal to "make numbers up," via "sampling," for hard-to-enumerate segments of the population? The Constitution means what it says and says what it means. And this is what it says:

"Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."

Enumeration means, um, enumeration, not estimation. Just as with the California bar exam fiasco, an expensive correct solution is preferable to an inexpensive incorrect solution.

California should keep that in mind today; the federal government should keep that in mind in 2010.

Hat tip to En Passant.