<p>they said they wouldn't curve? So we just got our latest Calc 2 grade distribution sheet and like... out of 30 students, 20 has C's or lower (counting it, it seems like only 10 C's, rest are D's and F's), 5 have B-, 3 have B's, 1 has an A-, 1 has an A...</p>
<p>I'm not sure if this is the normal grade distribution for a class like this?</p>
<p>the odd prof might curve, the majority don't care if the class gets crappy grades on a test. haven't had a teacher curve since about 8th grade</p>
<p>happened once in my biology class, where there was originally no curve but in the end the professor curved it up. im not sure but the distribution you described is slightly alarming. but if the final is a complete joke and everyone aces it, then the grades may average out to B-/C+ (usually the mean).</p>
<p>Hm, alright.</p>
<p>The reason that this class is actually a bit lacking in grades isn't because the kids aren't smart, but the fact that the teacher requires a really odd amount of work. We're graded on our English instead of our Math skills. </p>
<p>I know countless times where I'd get 7/12 because my I used the word "it" too much. I suspect at least half of the grades that are C's and below are the result of that kind of grading.</p>
<p>Thanks :D</p>
<p>Most of my college classes have curved when the final grades are below 70. Or, sometimes if there is an odd, low, test average they'll let us fix it with some extra work. But mostly classes aren't curved just to make the average more bell-like. Curving is for those classes where the highest grade is a C...</p>
<p>I had a Calc 4 prof who curved pretty much everything we ever did. The midterm was ridiculous; it had 70 marks and even after he made it out of 60 the class average was 67%.</p>
<p>Just wrote the final yesterday. He said he'd be nice and make the final out of 100 instead of the 120 marks that were on it. I honestly think that won't be enough :(.</p>
<p>Well, there was one professor I had who made tests with like 110 points of questions on it, but counted only out of 100 (so you could get up to 10 points wrong and still get 100%) and he did readjust it after the test, though the overall grade divisions (A,B cutoffs etc) didn't change. I guess that's the same thing, but a bit more indirect.</p>
<p>One time the professor had to curve in the opposite direction. It was calc 3 and the it was graded on a B-minus average curve, but the class average on the second midterm was 90% (tis was a small class), so he had to change the curve so more people got A's</p>
<p>If one of my professors says they won't curve, they won't curve (no matter how bad the grades).</p>
<p>^^ agree. If your teacher does end up curving the class after saying he wouldn't, it just means that he's a first-year teacher who realizes that he blows at teaching and feels bad for everyone failing.</p>
<p>Cvjn... that's actually a pretty true curve. If your prof were to "curve" that, he'd actually be skewing the distribution. Grades are generally meant to be on a bell curve (i.e., mean, mode, and median all a mid-range C with an SD of 1 grade letter, so about 2/3 of the students should have Cs).
Of course, people have a tendency to like giving positive feedback, so most classes will have averages in the low-B range...</p>
<p>What kind of calculus is this? crud, I haven’t written actual words in a math class since high school geometry. Even Discrete Math was just like “∀ x ∃ y ∈ lReals” (“for all x there exists a y element of the Real Numbers”, to those readers that don’t know math short hand) what do you WRITE? I was under the impression that even Writing Intensive math classes (which our cal classes are NOT) mostly just did proofs (more like citing theorems). Crap our teacher draws more pictures then he writes words (it’s just easier to draw a perpendicular or parallel line than write the word.)
My Computer Science teacher told me that it is better to get an Education than the get good grades, which is why she grades harshly. She says that jobs and grad schools look at what colleges give easy As and write off the students they graduate. It will be okay if you learn what you need to learn =D~ though your teacher doesn’t sound like a good math teacher… but just remember to put +C after you integrate and you’ll be alright. ^_~</p>
<p>I took a course that had a built in curve. It was ridiculously hard, so say you got a 70 in the course… you actually had a B!!</p>
<p>Otherwise, I haven’t had a curve at all in any of my classes =/</p>
<p>My chemistry professor hinted at a possible curve for our final exam, because it’s the American Chemical Society exam and we didn’t get through all of the topics that were on it. I took it yesterday, it wasn’t too bad, but there were a few problems where I just had no idea.</p>
<p>This is strange… only the very easiest classes here aren’t curved in some way</p>