Sum of N independent similarly distributed variables (questions), will tend to be normally distributed, that the central limit theorem, no need to manufacture anything.

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mjburgess 10 months ago | parent [-]

They're not independent.

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10 months ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 10 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, if one answers question A correctly, they is more likely to answer question B correctly, right?

	▲	mjburgess 10 months ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed. The whole premise of the activity is that they are highly correlated. The imposition of a normal distribution is done ad-hoc at the population level. All it says is that if scores were normally distributed, then "people would be so-and-so comparable". Almost all assumptions of this method are false. Any time anyone mentions the central limit theorem in applied stats is a warning sign for pseudoscience. If reality existed at the end of the CLT, it would be in heat death.