[argonaut]

There is no evidence to indicate he deviated from the actual required content of the course, only that his lecturing style deviated from what the department wanted. (This is indicated by the department having reviewed and approved his final, among other things).

Also, I'll repost what I said earlier: there is no evidence he gave out A's more freely than other professors.

The grade distribution for one of Coward's classes (16B) is available online for you to check: https://schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu/explore/courses/SP/2016.... It shows his class average was a B-, whereas most other professors around the year he taught had a B or B+ average.

[caskance]

And that by itself is inconclusive, as all the lazy students looking for easy A's know to sign up for Coward's class.

[argonaut]

I wasn't claiming he was harder on the students. I was claiming that there is absolutely no evidence he was popular because he gave out easy As. So you're agreeing with me.

[caskance]

I studied there, and during that time, spoke to and tutored many such students. Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence.

[argonaut]

And I brought to you a non-anecdotal, total-population statistic. Again, justifying the null hypothesis (that there is no evidence he was any harder or easier on students in the grade distribution).

[caskance]

No, you repeated Coward's own assertion, stripped of its original context.

[argonaut]

This is a non sequitur.

(more specifically: we weren't arguing about my first assertion, we were arguing about my second assertion. So the fact that you're trying to refute my second assertion, that there is no evidence he have out A's more freely, by attacking my first assertion, is irrelevant. I fully acknowledge that absent the department's response, we don't have the full picture of whether or not the department's issue was with the actual teaching content, but that was not what you and I were discussing)

[chris_wot]

"Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence".

Goodness! You mean the anti-vaxxers might have been onto something?

[caskance]

Sure, why not? It's hardly justified to deny the validity of every single step in someone's reasoning just because their conclusion was incorrect.