Hello,
NandishSS. Apart from the graph in the bottom-left, I cannot tell exactly which section the graph indicates. However, I will draw attention to whatever I do notice about each graph in hopes that such information may prove beneficial to you.
Top-left: This looks like a record of the overall performance on a section, either Verbal or Quant. It appears as though the test-taker was struggling with Medium-level questions, as indicated by the
purple Incorrect line, so the difficulty never got bumped up. You can see from the
light blue line that the Correct responses were always at a level below the incorrect responses. At a certain point, however, in the third leg of the section, the test-taker had finally reached a stasis, the point at which the algorithm had found the correct level of question difficulty for that particular test-taker. As would be expected, performance was similar at that level to how it had been before, observable by the symmetrical--V-shaped--performance statistics from the second to third to last points of capture. This was a low-medium-level performance for the test-taker in that section.
Top-right: Every question in the first quarter of the section was answered correctly, which is why the difficulty of the questions steadily increased, but also why the
Correct line is the only one visible. The test-taker began to miss some questions in the second part of the section, but not consistently enough for the bar to be lowered substantially. You can see, for instance, that the
Correct dot is only slightly below the
Incorrect one. After the halfway point, the test-taker started making more mistakes, so the difficulty level dropped more, and even the
Correct responses were to questions slightly less difficult, on average, than those that were missed. Again, the performance of the test-taker had been more or less dialed in by the time the third section had been completed. The difficulty of the questions went up slightly as performance increased, but the questions that the test-taker was missing or getting correct were on par with each other, in terms of difficulty. Overall, this was a medium-high performance.
Bottom-left: This appears to be a Verbal graph, although on recent ESRs I have seen, there is no bottom bar indicating numbers that would correspond to the old 41-question section or the newer 36-question section. This was a pretty strong showing from the test-taker, who missed medium-hard questions in the first portion of the test but was consistently answering the Medium questions correctly. Thus, the question difficulty was increasing all the while. In the second portion of the section, the test-taker was exposed to some very difficult questions but could not answer them correctly, so the question difficulty decreased from sections two to three. In the third section, there is a sad story that plays out, with the test-taker getting roughly the same level of questions from the previous section
Correct but answering lower-level questions, those at a completely Medium level, incorrectly. Perhaps the mental challenge of those tough questions from section two had taken its toll, or perhaps the test-taker was distracted at this point. Whatever the case may have been, it is a shame, in my view, to see such an inversion in an ESR. It leads to negative thinking, as in,
Why couldn't I get those easier questions right in the third part? What would have happened if I had? Should I take the test again? The overall difficulty of the questions dipped somewhat between the third and fourth portions of the section, but at least the inversion disappeared and the test-taker was missing only harder questions on average.
Bottom-right: This is like a hybrid of the top-left and top-right graphs, with an equilibrium being reached around the second portion of the section between questions missed and questions answered correctly (again, in terms of difficulty). Seeing such a convergence is a good thing, really, showing that the questions the test-taker was seeing fell in line with that person's ability in that particular measure. The near flatlining that occurs afterwards among questions missed is what you would expect to see. The third portion of the section appears to have been the hardest (again) for this test-taker. The
Correct answers were at a lower level, but pretty much whenever the test-taker had the opportunity to work on harder questions, those answers tended to be
Incorrect. Thus, the question difficulty did not really increase thereafter. The bar had already been set, and the convergence at the end more or less shows that once again, the algorithm had found the right spot for the student to perform consistently on questions. This was an average performance in the section, nothing great, but nothing horrible either.
I hope that helps. Details on the ESR are given in the
blue Summary box for each section.
- Andrew
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