<p>How’d everyone do? Median is 21. So what scores inclusive are Bs and As? Distinguish between A- and B + and all that stuff, because im not sure. One of the TA’s said that the standard deviation was 7 points, so im not sure what that means for grades when including the signs.</p>
<p>The average and standard deviation is different between lectures. Lecture 3 had an average of 26 and a standard deviation of 9.25. I think Scerri rounds up, so 36+ is A- and above and 16 and below is C- and below.</p>
<p>And what does that mean for lecture 1, with standard deviation around 7 and mean around 21? Does that mean 28 is the A-? And how many more points to reach an A, and how many more points to reach A+? </p>
<p>Sorry if I sound Neurotic, I’m just curious.</p>
<p>Wow that blows, I wish I was in lecture 1. I got a 28 in lecture 3 and that’s only 2 above the median in this class but would have been 7 above the median in the other class. Not too good…</p>
<p>so what letter grade can you receive? I got 27.5 in the same section as you.</p>
<p>I’d guess we got around a B-. Not horrible, but definitely not great either.</p>
<p>So I got 32.5 in lecture 3. What does that translate to? Thanks.
But anyway, why would the means be so different in the different lectures? Does Scerri teach better in lecture 3 for whatever crazy reason? Or does lec. 3 have better TAs?</p>
<p>Lecture 3 is a smaller class than Lecture 1. He probably doesn’t have to wait a couple minutes in the beginning of each class to wait for everyone to settle down. I’m guessing he goes a little more in depth and covers more material in Lecture 3. You guys are ahead of us in the reader right now. He didn’t cover net dipole for the homework today in lecture 1.</p>
<p>He didn’t cover that for us either, and I emailed him asking if he still wanted us to do that page.</p>
<p>Guys—the reason your average is higher in lecture 3 is because certain people get answers from people in lecture 1 and, thus, do better on the test. </p>
<p>Also, the class isnt curved like you think it is. It does not have each grade independently curved. What happens in the end is that all your grades are added together (with this test being worth 30% iirc) and you guys are ranked. Based on this ranking he looks for “natural breaks or gaps in the ranking” and then cuts off letter grades at those points. </p>
<p>Thus, some people wil always get A+, A, A- B+…,D…F.</p>
<p>I saw the midterm. The test itself wasnt very hard. I’m a tutor for the class and covered almost everything EXPLICITLY in section (I guessed pretty well). What was harsh was how tough they graded it. I saw continuous 0/3’s because students were missing one particular word or phrase that SHOULD have eqauted to at least 2/3 pts.</p>
<p>“Guys—the reason your average is higher in lecture 3 is because certain people get answers from people in lecture 1 and, thus, do better on the test.” </p>
<p>Wow, that’s pretty bad if people actually do that. I thought cheating was done after high school. If people are getting away with this…then that is a serious problem. I don’t want to get screwed by the curve because some people got the questions ahead of time. </p>
<p>“I saw the midterm. The test itself wasnt very hard. I’m a tutor for the class and covered almost everything EXPLICITLY in section (I guessed pretty well). What was harsh was how tough they graded it. I saw continuous 0/3’s because students were missing one particular word or phrase that SHOULD have eqauted to at least 2/3 pts.” </p>
<p>I disagree, I think the test was difficult in comparison to the past midterms that were in the pink book. PLUS they graded really tough.</p>
<p>Ow wow, now it seems obvious that lec 3 people get answers from lec 1. I know this sounds weird, but I feel stupid for not realizing that some people do that. But yeah, I totally agree with ucla_ftw. I do things honestly, so it really stinks that I have to get screwed by the dishonest people. But yeah, that’s the way the world runs, I guess.</p>
<p>When I asked my TA why lec 3 had such a higher mean, he just said that different TAs grade it, but come to think of it, that doesn’t make any sense since Scerri must give them all the same grading standard.</p>
<p>
What are these “natural breaks or gaps in the ranking”? So say some people have 85-90 percent, then another group have 70-80 percent and he decides that the former will be As and the latter will be Bs and anybody in between will get A-/B+ depending which range they’re closer to?</p>