MIDTERM GRADE INFORMATION, 73/88-110 FALL, 2003: IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Friends, The midterm grade is designed to give you INFORMATION. The letter grade you receive only indicates how you are doing relative to your classmates. If you get an A, you are doing much better than average, a B indicates above average, a C indicates average or slightly below, a D indicates below average, and an R indicates much worse than average. When FINAL GRADES are calculated, much more consideration will be placed on first trying to place each student within a group that deserves a similar grade, then trying to make the best case for each student to have him or her moved to a higher category based on unusual external circumstances, and finally assigning grades appropriate to each group of students. It is likely that such a process, if it were done today, would not result in anyone receiving a lower grade than indicated, and might well allow some to receive a higher grade. NOTWITHSTANDING THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE, DO NOT IGNORE THE INFORMATION INHERENT IN YOUR MIDTERM GRADE! If you received a D or R at midterm, you are in SERIOUS trouble, and you need to do something about it NOW. I am very willing to help in any way that I can, but YOU need to take responsibility for initiating and following up on actions that will better your grade. COME AND SEE ME, NOW! If you are getting a C, you should also come and see me, as many such students, if they so desire, have been able to alter a few behaviors and consequently learn and understand the material in such a way that they can achieve much higher grades by the end of the semester, if they initiate some action now. If you are getting a B, good job, make a few adjustments and strive for an A. Come and see me if you want some suggestions. If you are getting an A, then please continue the fine work, and also consider volunteering to help some of your other classmates achieve a better understanding of the material. This only takes a small commitment of time (say one or two hours a week), and in the process you will often learn a lot more about the material---teaching is an easy route to learning. --John ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- What graded material is left in the semester? Homework constitutes 50% of your final grade. Your midterm grade is based on 5 out of 11 total assignments, and thus we have 55% of the homework remaining (which will count for a little less than 30% of the total remaining in your final grade). Please remember that homework averages tend to be high, so good performance on homework requires very high grades. The first midterm counted for 20% of your grade. The second exam will also count for 20% of your final grade. To re cap, you have: Roughly 30% of the final grade remaining on homework and 20% remaining on exams. (There is also 10% from experimental payoffs, but as long as you actively participate in the experiments and do your best, this should not negatively factor into your final grade.) ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- How was the midterm grade calculated? Your midterm grade was calculated as follows: 1) If you had any missing homework, you received a 0 on that homework. You should double check with me if you think we may have inadvertently missed one of your homeworks---one way to check this is to do the calculation below and see if your calculation gives you the same midterm grade that was recorded on the system. IMPORTANT NOTE: Although we will drop your lowest homework score in calculating your final grade, we did NOT do this for midsemester, as keeping it in provides some useful information. If you failed to turn in an assignment, or got an exceptionally low score on something, then this will have a big impact on your midsemester_homework_score---please make sure that you turn in EVERYTHING else on time and that your remaining homework is done to a high standard, so that this will not be a serious factor in your final grade. That is, if your midterm grade is low because of a bad score or missing assignment, you do NOT have much flexibility and you need to be EXTREMELY careful from here on out. BTW, if your midterm grade is low because of the above, you can easily recalculate it by replacing the bad grade with something that is closer to your average performance---in this way, you can see what would have happened if you had not had a problem. Please be careful here---while one bad homework grade won't make much of a difference (since it will be dropped), two or more will have a significant impact on your grade. 2) A midterm_homework_score was calculated by taking the sum of your points on the five homeworks. Thus, your midterm_homework_scores ranged from 0 to 100 points. 3) Your midterm_test_score is equal to the score you received on the first exam. Thus, midterm_test_score ranges from 0 to 100. 4) Your final_midterm_score was calculated as follows: final_midterm_score = midterm_homework_score + midterm_test_score. Thus, these scores ranged from 0 to 200, and are composed 50% from homework and 50% from exams. (Note that your final grade will be of a slightly different weighting, but given the usual high homework scores the heavier weight on exams at this point may give you a more accurate overall picture.) As discussed above, there is also a small fraction of your final grade (10%) that is a function of the profits you earned in the experiments---this does not appear in your midsemester grade, and will only make a difference in your final grade if you are on a border. 5) Your midsemester letter grade was calculated as follows: A >= 192 B >= 187 C >= 146 D >= 129 R < 129 +/- were given if your grade was on the extremes of the indicated range. Again, these grades are for your information, and do not reflect what your actual letter grade would be if these were final grades. Heed the warning...if you receive a C or below, come see me. --------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------