Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Initial grading is in

The final grades will be curved, definitely.

I just finished grading the multiple choice part last night, and the average was about 60%. I will scale the multiple choice part upward so that the class average is a 75%, which in the end means adding about 15 points to everyone's grade. (The distribution was still nicely Gaussian, with a decent spread, so just adding points is OK.)

The problems will be scaled separately if need be; I have not started grading them yet.

Basically, I don't want to have everyone's grade brought down at the last minute (this is both unfair and distasteful), and usually it ends up that about half the class improves, half goes down, but almost no one makes a huge jump either way. My finals are more or less just a last chance to make sure that you learned what I think you learned and your grade is where it is supposed to be ... not a last chance to wildly alter it.

So anyway: rest easy, it will almost certainly not be as bad as you thought. I will post here when it is all finished.

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