Incident 86: Coding Errors in Leaving Certificate Grading Algorithm Caused Inaccurate Scores in Ireland

Description: Errors in Irish Department of Education's algorithm to calculate students’ Leaving Certificate exam grades resulted in thousands of inaccurate scores.

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Incident Stats

Incident ID
86
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2020-10-08
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
CSETv0, CSETv1, GMF

CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Problem Nature

Specification

Physical System

Software only

Level of Autonomy

Medium

Nature of End User

Amateur

Public Sector Deployment

Yes

Data Inputs

student's class and exam grades

CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Incident Number

86

Explainer: why has one line of computer code caused such disruption to the Leaving Cert grades?
independent.ie · 2020

This week it emerged that a problem was discovered with the Leaving Certificate calculated grades system which means thousands of students will have their results upgraded. But what happened?

What is an algorithm?

It’s code that makes decis…

Leaving Cert: Why the Government deserves an F for algorithms
irishtimes.com · 2020

August, following the grading algorithm debacle in the UK, I wrote a column wondering if perhaps this unfortunate event might prove a critical tipping point for public trust in the almighty algorithm.

This new generation in the UK, about to…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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