On Sun, 02 May 2004 14:36:36 -0400, the renowned "Gene Kearns"
wrote:

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 09:22:18 -0400, Kingfish
wrote:

I come to the experts on everything I can think of help. My
teacher-wife asked me if she was calculating this correctly. I didn't
think so. What's the answer and why/how?

Chapter tests count for 60% of the final grade. Mid-term and final
tests count for 40% of the final grade. Scores for chapter tests were
80, 50 and 69. Mid-term and final tests were 80 and 90. What is the
final grade. One of us says 73.8 and the other says 80.7

Thanks

I have something better than math for you..... logic.

(1) Are you going to pass a student that has failed two chapter tests?
and (2) Barring some sort of epiphany, how does a student that
averages 66.3 on chapter tests miraculously know 85 percent of the
material (Average) at mid-term and final?

Something doesn't add up here, and it ain't math.....

The student might have had a bad day on the chapter test. The test
might have inadvertently been too difficult (one of my most memorable
mid-terms in University had an AVERAGE grade of 18/50 and this was an
über-engineering lot (EngSci). The professor actually apologized after
that one (a VERY rare occurence). They bell-curved the grades upward,
but it was pretty meaningless at that point.

I've found the three community college courses I've taken recently
seem to deliberately make the quizzes "relatively" difficult and the
exams very easy. Dunno why. I sure wouldn't want to hire someone who
only got 60% in those courses (and there were people who were that
bad, and not necessarily just because their first language was
Gujarati or Urdu, though I'm sure that didn't help).

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
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