<p>92% + on the final is an A-??!! this isnt efing ugba 10
dammit aroux...maybe MIT does inflate grades</p>
<p>Was it an easy final? :P</p>
<p>The final was a joke…</p>
<p>it was fuucking ridiculously easy.</p>
<p>the median was a 90% on the final and the 3rd quartile was 95%</p>
<p>what’s weird is that his tests are the same he gives to the kids at MIT (at the same level) and I guess this because on mit ocw the sample finals are the same ones he gave us for our sample finals. Their hw, however, is slightly harder.</p>
<p>mit kids must find his class ridic easy</p>
<p>wait how’d you know 92% is an A- where’d you find that info?</p>
<p>Well if you look at the midterms, he placed the A- cutoff right at the cutoff of the top quartile, which was 92% in this case.</p>
<p>oh you counted it out of 150 ic</p>
<p>yeah…he needs to make some harder exams</p>
<p>This is why I dislike easy exams. Easy exams only make it more difficult for smart people to do better since the curve hurts them more. Easy exams only help the bottom percentile of students get a chance at a decent grade. If it werent for making a nice gaussian grade distribution, I would love easy exams where every one does well. But we are Berkeley.</p>
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qft. 10char.</p>
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<p>its on his website:</p>
<p>12/18: The final exam is graded, and your score is / will be on bSpace. The class median was 129. (The quartiles are: 111, 129, 138). </p>
<p>[Math</a> 53 - Multivariable Calculus - Fall 2010](<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/~auroux/53f10/]Math”>http://math.berkeley.edu/~auroux/53f10/)</p>
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<p>YES!! WHY DO PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND THIS?</p>
<p>well if it’s an easy test and you score lower than someone else, you have no one to blame but yourself. if even the bottom percentile could get these Qs right, then if you see yourself as a top percentile, then maybe you should have achieved a 100% or close. if you don’t see yourself as a top percentile, then i guess that’s why they only give A’s to that sector.</p>
<p>no crowslayer</p>
<p>if its a really exam than the difference between A/A-/B+ comes down to trivial mistakes like arithmetic errors. You can easily have much better at the material than someone else, but still get a significantly lower grade (B+ vs A) just because u made a few small meaningless errors.</p>
<p>A good exam will differentiate everyone. It should have both easy and difficult problemsx.</p>
<p>Auroux said that if everyone does well on the final, the curve won’t hurt our grades. </p>
<p>That being said, Math 53 was one of the stupidest classes I’ve ever taken. An entire letter grade can literally be decided by trivial arithmetic errors, as anyone who remotely knows what’s going on can easily understand the material.</p>
<p>“Auroux said that if everyone does well on the final, the curve won’t hurt our grades.”</p>
<p>for reals?</p>
<p>Yes, some kid asked him, and he said it with a warm smile.</p>
<p>What I’m freaking out about right now is that a 90% on the final curves down to like a 83% on the midterms if the midterms are getting replaced by the final grade. Like ***?!?</p>
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<p>although i agree, i also think everyone makes mistakes. </p>
<p>the difference with easy and hard tests is the mentality you have to have when taking them. with hard tests it is all about getting as many as you can right, then trying to express your knowledge about the material on other problems however you can, and try to earn partial credit. with easy tests, the mentality has to be on minimizing errors. it’s a three hour test out of 4 months of sitting in class. it’s a big deal. a student should scrutinize every minute of their final to make sure their answers are as perfect as they can make them. </p>
<p>don’t get me wrong, i’ve been on the bad end of that stick too, and understand your opinion too, but in the end this is my opinion. whenever i’m faced with a relatively easy test i try to remember that the competition will be a lot stricter and i try to take extra caution while writing up my solutions or answers. </p>
<p>now im not saying easy tests are “better” than hard tests, because you make a very good point about how a test should differentiate clearly between students at different levels and i think harder tests “may” do a better job (idk, i never took chem here where averages are in the 50% range…) but easy tests are certainly not “unfair.” a test is a test is a test. you get what you get: whether you made mistakes or not, you have no one to blame or commend but yourself. </p>
<p>either way tests try to measure how much a class has learned. in that light, they’re more for the teacher than for the students. after this test and after seeing how well everyone performed maybe Auroux will change the syllabus and go further into multivar calc next time around and produce more knowledgeable students in the future. </p>
<p>but for students this semester, all i have to say is walk in to the test room, sit down, dominate, leave with a smile–if the final was really that easy. (the test doesn’t make up your entire grade anyway). and if a class is curved, you should always walk in ready to kick your peers’ butts whether the test is easy or hard or of perfect difficulty. it’s your education and your future; take responsibility.</p>
<p>yeah easy tests aren’t unfair thats for sure, but easy tests do not produce as accurate results as good tests (not necessarily hard tests, but good tests)</p>
<p>an easy test can not be a good test because a good test (in my definition) has a wide range of difficulty</p>
<p>im actually at the good end of this stick as I guess I didn’t make any errors, but I can clearly see how people may be angered at getting curved AGAINST in a technical class.</p>
<p>If you look at CourseRank grades, you’ll see that not every lower division engineering, physics, or math class follows the 25/65 rule. I think Berkeley would prefer that the professors do, but don’t seem to be required to do so. He might not curve you guys down after it’s all said and done.</p>
<p>i got a 90.44% in the class without the curve, and bot a B+. is that grounds for a complaint?</p>
<p>Yes it is.</p>