RECENT NEWS RELEASES
AVANTE Announces Solution for Fixing the College Board SAT Scoring Errors
(Princeton NJ, August 3, 2007)- AVANTE is proud to announce the allowance of additional patent (10487,886) that can substantially improved the test scoring and management. The recent 2006 scoring errors of SAT by the tabulation company engaged by the College Board highlighted the long needed technology upgrading. The errors were attributed to the moisture induced paper expansion and inability to resolve lightly marked “bubble marks”.
The inability to resolve lightly marked “bubble marks” and errors due to paper expansion or shrinkage are known problems in the industry for at least 30 years ever since automatic tabulation of standardized tests was used. Combining with the inherent paper alignment errors, as much as 1.5% of tests¹ were tallied wrong in this publicized debacle. For the individual student taking the test, the highest error rate is 450 points¹ or 19% for a 2400 points test or 25% for a 1600 points test.
Lesser known to the public, the same error rates also appeared in tabulation of votes in US elections when paper ballots are used. The Federal Voting System Standards of 2002 now specifically mandate voting systems to have less than 1 error in 500,000 marks when the paper ballot is marked correctly (i.e. properly filled “bubble marks”). Systems based on the same discrete sensor/OMR technology seem to have problem meeting this mandate.
AVANTE International Technology Inc. is proud to announce a recently EAC certified system for tallying ballots using pixel count and document imaging technology. AVANTE Optical VOTE-TRAKKER® is the first to pass and exceed this stringent federal testing with zero error in tabulation in 1,500,000 marks. The same technology and system also works for scoring tests and has been used for tabulation of surveys and questionnaires besides tallying ballots.
The discrete sensor OMR technology relies on the papers passing through the scanner “exactly” straight so the marking positions with respect to the width line up “correctly” and timing correctly for reading based on the length of the papers every time. With the use of the advanced technology of document imaging, AVANTE uses fiducial marks to scale for any orientation and paper expansion/shrinkage variations. The additional use of quantitative counting of pixels in each “bubble mark” also provides automatic self-checking for possible light markings and other human intent discrepancy and electronically retrieved the specific forms for manual tabulation. The following table is a summary of the differences between the traditional discrete sensor OMR and imaging plus quantitative pixel counting technologies.
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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DISCRETE SENSOR-OMR AND IMAGING-PIXEL COUNT TECHNOLOGIES
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DISCRETE SENSOR-OMR
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IMAGING-PIXEL COUNT
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Recognition of filled “bubble mark”
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Yes
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Yes
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Recognition of lightly filled “bubble mark”
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Mostly no (Need high threshold)
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Yes
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Independence on timing tracks
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No
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Yes
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Ability to resolve registration (fiducial) marks
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No
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Yes
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Ability to resolve wrinkled and creased papers
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No
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Yes
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Ability to resolve paper shrinkage/expansion
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No
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Yes
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Recognition of “X” marks
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Mostly no or marginal.
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Yes
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Resolving barcode (type or individual form)
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Yes
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Yes
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Resolving multiple and different pages
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Yes
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Yes
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Resolving random orientation of pages
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No
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Yes
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“Separating” written answers from “bubbles”
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No
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Yes
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Automatic self-check for accuracy
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No
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Yes
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Ability to retrieve individual test for recount
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No
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Yes
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Speed (Per Scanner)
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Up to 10,000 pages/hr-scanner
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Up to 6,000 pages/hr-scanner
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Accuracy
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> 1/1,000 (2006 SAT case: >1/100)
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<1/1,500,000 (Federal ITA tested)
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¹ “SAT Problems Even Larger Than Reported”, Karen W. Arenson, NY Times, March 23, 2006
ABOUT AVANTE
AVANTE is located in Princeton, NJ (www.avantetech.com) and looking to partner and license this patented optical tabulation technology (AVANTE Patented US 6,892,944; 7,077,313 and allowed pending patent 10/487,886) to help to eliminate scoring errors in standardized tests, surveys and questionnaires along with its original solution for accurately tabulated ballots for elections.
Contact
Rick Gleim or Cynthia Chu 609/799-8896
For more detailed information: http://www.avantetech.com/products/surveys/
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