As per the syllabus (md), the grades were computed by:
The participation grade was a combination of four values: the two quizzes, attendance at Jason Belford’s talk, and a pop attendance quiz on 11/15. The first three were out of 10 points each, the last out of 5. That means the participation grade was out of 35 points total. This is a few too few things to really judge participation, so it wascompensated by raising the course curve to 7 points (instead of the promised 5 point mentioned previously). Note that this curve includes the 0.5 points for rounding, so you don’t get to round again. So if you add 7 points to your course average (as per the course gradebook), and look that up on the decade curve (80-83 is a B-, 83-37 a B, 87-90 a B+, and similarly for the other decades), then that’s your final grade. Note that the A+ range is a it different, as it’s a percentage of the class (the top 4 averages).
Essays are graded via the staircase grading method