As per the syllabus (md), the grades were computed by:
I did not give as many quizzes – or take attendance – as many times as I would have liked. There were only three quizzes, and only one attendance day, and having so few would cause missing any one (or doing poorly on any one) to have a particularly large impact. So everybody got a base 5/10 for the participation (think of this as like a mini course curve), and the remaining quizzes and attendance day would make up the other 5/10. Note that if you had a valid excuse for missing a quiz or attendance day, then this was taken into account, and the non-free 5 points was computed with this in mind. This is listed as your ‘participation’ grade in the course gradebook, and was rounded to the nearest 0.01. I realize this does not necessarily capture all the ways that people could have participated in the course.
Yes, we round grades. Note that round(x) ==
floor(x+0.5). So we added 0.5 points to everybody’s curve to take
into account rounding. Note that this means rounding is already taken
care of, so if you get an 89.9999999999999999999, it’s still a B+, no
matter how many times you ask - you don’t get to round a second time (in
reality, it was an 89.49).
The overall course got a curve of 3.5 points. With rounding, that is an additional 4.0 points to add to your final course average. This was to make up for some harsh grading on the exams and homeworks, and to bring the average of the course up a bit. Thus, add 3.5 to your course average from the course gradebook, and that round that up if necessary. Or add 4.0 to your course average, and don’t round it.
We followed the standard decade curve, as shown in the table below.
| Minimum course average | Letter grade |
|---|---|
| 60 | D- |
| 63 | D |
| 67 | D+ |
| 70 | C- |
| 73 | C |
| 77 | C+ |
| 80 | B- |
| 83 | B |
| 87 | B+ |
| 90 | A- |
| 93 | A |
| 98 | A+ |
Note that the A+ range range follows a slightly different pattern – it is the top few students in the class by average, and ended up being 98.0 this semester.