Hello,

Final Exam scores and Final Grades have been posted on PostEm.

Please read the following carefully as it will answer all your
questions that can be addressed before the beginning of Spring
term. No grade changes can or will be submitted this term. The grades
have been submitted to the Registrar via the SIS and I will not consider any
grade changes until the beginning of next semester (1/10/05). If a grade
change is justified, I will gladly file the form. HOWEVER, I think you
will see below than any additional changes are very, very, very
unlikely, unless there is a purely mathematical error.

Should you send me email about your grade, it is most likely you will
be referred back to this message for your answer. All grades were
assigned in accordance with published course policies. I think you
will see that adjustments were made in the grading scale for a variety
of reasons and this is why it is very unlikely any changes will be
approved by me.

I. Final Exam.

The Final Exam went well for almost everyone and very badly for a
few. This was really a very good performance for the group as a whole,
about what we normally aim for on an Exam. Much better than the
Midterm. Here are the stats:

High: 92
Low: 48

Mean: 74.14
Median: 77
Total Exams: 29

Distribution:

90-100: 3
80-90: 8
70-80: 8
60-70: 7
50-60: 2
49 and below: 1

Again, this was a really good job for the class as a whole and a nice
way to end the term. 

II. Final Grades.

Remember, there is a complex formula to get your final %. It is as
follows:

(Midterm x .15) +
(Final x .3) +
(Final Proj x .25) +
(Quiz% x .1)
(Assign% x .2) = some value less than 100.00

Using the values exactly as they appear on PostEM, you can calculate
your own percentage. I have double-checked the calculations to be sure
they are accurate.

ALSO NOTE: I have decided to reward those who attended lecture, based
on the response cards you were asked to submit. For every card
submitted, 1 point was added to that student's Final Exam score, up to
a maximum of 100/100 on the Final. (That is, the "card bonus" could
not be used to score over 100 on the Final). You will note a column
labeled "Final % with Card Bonus" and another merely "Card Bonus."
There were 6 cards requested, so the maximum "Card Bonus" is 6. The
"Final % with Card Bonus" lets you see what impact the cards had for
you. Basically, all 6 cards could increase your Final% by 1.8%. It
turns out this had an impact on several students. 

THE FINAL GRADING CURVE WAS ESTABLISHED BEFORE THE CARD BONUS WAS
ADDED.

Make sure you understand this. The overall averages used to set the
grading scale were NOT effected by this bonus. Instead, those who
submitted cards got an extra reward for doing so, after the Final
Grading Scale was set.

FINAL GRADING SCALE:

Given the below par performance on the Midterm, I made an adjustment
of 1.0% down on the final grading scale. This was the first
step. While no adjustment was needed based on the Final Exam, I made
an additional 1.0% downward adjustment to cover any issues with
Assignments, Quizzes and the like. This was the second step. Together,
this means the grading scale went from 90,80,70,60 to
88,78,68,58. THEN, I decided to make one final adjustment to the
overall grading scale. Each succeeding grade range, BEGINNING WITH "B"
was expanded by one additional point. This means the B range was
expanded to 11, the C range to 12, and the D range to 13
points. PLEASE NOTE: The +/- grades remain as the upper and lower 2.5%
of each range, respectively.

The original grading scale was

90-100: A
80-90: B
70-80: C
60-70: D
Below 60: F

The new grading scale is:

88-100: A
77-88: B
65-77: C
52-65: D
Below 52: F

NOTE: Since the requirement of passing the Final to pass the course
was based on the original grading scale, and since I changed that
grading scale, the Final Exam requirement changed. A passing grade on
the Final was 52. NOTE this is a huge change from the original scale
where anything below a 60 would have been failingf. In addition, since
the "card bonus" was added to the Final Exam, I took this into
consideration. Unfortunately, even with all these adjustments, there
were 2 students who did not earn a passing grade on the Final Exam and
failed the course as a consequence.

ALSO NOTE: These changes turned a mid-D into a mid-C and a high-C into
a low-B.

So the final grading scale looks like this, including +/- grades:

Overall A range: 88-100
A+: 97.5 - 100
A: 90.5 - 97.5
A-: 88.0 - 90.5

Overall B range: 77-88
B+: 85.5 - 88
B: 79.5 - 85.5
B-: 77 - 79.5

Overall C range: 65-77
C+: 74.5 - 77
C: 67.5 - 74.5
C-: 65 - 67.5

Overall D range: 52-65
D+: 62.5 - 65
D: 54.5 - 62.5
D-: 52 - 54.5

Below 52%: F

The distribution BEFORE the "card bonus" was as follows:

A+: 0
A: 3
A-: 2
    TOTAL A: 5

B+: 2
B: 10
B-: 1
    TOTAL B: 13

C+: 4
C: 3
C-: 1
    TOTAL C: 8

D+: 0
D: 0
D-: 0
    TOTAL D: 0

F: 8
   TOTAL F: 9 (including those students who never attended but did not drop
   are added)

Based on this grading scale, plus the "card bonus" added AFTER this
scale was set, here is the FINAL distribution of final grades in A116:

A+: 0
A: 4
A-: 1
    Total A: 5

B+: 5
B: 7
B-: 2
    Total B: 14

C+: 4
C: 2
C-: 1
    Total C: 7

D+: 0
D: 0
D-: 0
    Total D: 0

F: 
    Total F: 9 (including 4 "FN"s for a students who vanished during
the course or never attended, 2 students who failed the Final Exam,
and 3 students who failed to earn a passing average over the course of
the 8 weeks.)

As you can see, about 65% of the class earned an "A" or "B" (based on
the 29-30 students who were regular attenders and did all the work), while
about about 25% failed the course for one reason or another (based on
all students enrolled).

III. NOTE on "Borderline" grades.

After assigning all final grades based on the above scale with all
it's adjustments, I still went back and examined every score that was
on the borderline. By borderline, I mean within .1, .2, or maybe .3
points of the next grade. If you were more than .3 points away, I
didn't even consider your case. Being 2 or 3 or 4 _whole points_
from the next grade is _not_ borderline. For example, if you have an
84.0% average, there is no way you will be moved to an "B+", which
requires an 85.5% average.

In such real borderline cases, I looked at each student's performance in
all aspects of the course. If the work was of consistent quality and
improvement was shown during the duration of the course, the higher
grade was awarded.

If, however, one or more of the facets of the course were very much
below the rest, or improvement was not shown, or work was not submitted
(with the resulting score of 0), the higher grade was not given. So,
if you missed 3-4 quizzes, or if you failed to submit one of the
Assignments, or if you were not present for all the Final Project
presentations, then I did not even consider moving you to the next
highest grade.

Please be sure you understand this, as it will be exactly the answer
you will get should you ask me to reconsider your grade. In a very
important way, I already have reconsidered each and every grade before
sending this note and posting the results. Any future changes would
only occur in the event of a mathematical or transcription error, as
noted above.

I hope those of you who participated throughout the course enjoyed
it. I know I did. Enjoy the holiday break.

-Jeff