<p>AceAites, I have a pretty strong hunch you’re using a definition of inflation that deviates from the classic economics use.</p>
<p>Inflation in the classical derivation is the rising of some variable X in respect to a given standard. In economics, this standard is purchasing power. The reason we can continuously raise prices over the years (compare prices from the early 1900s to now) while also saying we’re not experiencing inflation is because the increase in money supply, for the most part, covaried with the increase in both prices of goods and market wages (thus maintaining some standard of purchasing power with respect to units of labor). Inflation happens when the growth of the money supply outpaces wage growth, driving down the rate of purchasing power. Inflation can be modeled using temporal markers to create parity between purchasing power at time 1 and at time X. </p>
<p>What is the standard in GPA? It’s debating, but I argue it’s the standard to which one school considers to be “average”. Average takes on one of two meanings: mean or median. If we assume a normal distribution (we don’t have to make any assumptions about the steepness or dispersion of the distribution), then mean ~= median. If we take a second weak assumption that there exists some standard “average” that all schools should acknowledge, then deviations from this standard (Standard - SchoolAverage) would imply either relative inflation (represented by [Standard - SchoolAverage] < 0), deflation (represented by [Standard - SchoolAverage] > 0), or relative normality (Standard ~= SchoolAverage)].</p>
<p>Given this, we can either exogenously define a standard (say 3.0) or we can compute the actual population mean (arithmetic or geometric mean of all schools in this sample) to standardize all other comparisons. Following this, schools that have a GPA average that falls significantly to the right-half of the distribution are then defined as locales of relative inflation (in that they meet the criteria set by [Standard - SchoolAverage] < 0) or deflation (following from the obverse). </p>
<p>Anyway, I spent way too much time on this and I have a lot of research to catch up on. Whatever the case, you can’t draw logical conclusions about how effort maps onto GPAs at different schools because there are variable effects that go on in every school. There are aggregate patterns that can be inferred by data, but there is no ubiquitous way to quantify how X units of effort map onto Grades in different schools.</p>