On 22 Dec 1999 14:47:38 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (dennis roberts) wrote:
[ ... TWO general kinds of "grading" on the curve ...
... how frequently each happens ...]
> 1. LOWERing cutoffs ... thus, INcreasing the #s of those getting various
> higher grades
I have never had the responsibility, but as a statistician, I don't
think I could swallow the prospect of a strict numeric translation,
starting from "assignments" alone, when I consider the grades fading
off into Ds and Fs. If someone forced me to do that, I guess I would
try to stick in a component that measured "classroom participation".
Or I would have to try to figure a way to give bonus-points. Or
something.
Actually, I see where I might want to be more arbitrary that just
changing a cutoff. How do you reward someone who is really trying
hard, vs. someone who is smart but is blowing it off? Or, to get
concrete in another fashion -- the football ratings reward/punish
teams more for the most recent games, the final games. But I think
more of my courses (as a student) used equal weighting across a term,
by halves or thirds, than used a highly weighted Final. Suddenly, I
see a virtue in having a heavy Final. And in having some subjective
grading of it (essay questions always gave room to fudge).
> 2. making cutoffs such that the distribution of GRADES resembles a normal
> distribution
My Dad mentioned a professor (chemistry, possibly) from a half-century
ago who he said was labeled "Square-root Benson" because that was
the number of A's he was willing to give. So you would prefer taking
a small class from him (9, giving 3) or, better, a tutorial (4, giving
2).
That was not "normal" and I have trouble imagining anyone in a long
time who would get away with giving as many F's as A's. Especially
with the notoriety of "grade inflation."
The only classes I had where I remember an announcement about grading
on a curve were the freshman classes I had a Rice, and that was
definitely the case in physics and chemistry. There were several
hundred in each class. The course components added to 1000 (350
points total for Labs, 100 for this test, etc.) and an A might have
been translated from 700. I am pretty positive there were more A's
than F's. There were a whole lot of C's.
How I interpret their attitude: "It is an artificial standard, which
is undesirable for various reasons, to set up enough EASY questions so
that some desired fraction will hit 90% correct."
In chemistry, everyone noticed, right off, that the ridiculously
difficult homework assignments, due each Monday, were weighted *zero*
points in the total; that certainly cut down on the amount of papers
that the TAs had to look at. -- There was an object-lesson implicit
there, I am sure, but I am less sure what that lesson was.
--
Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
