In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Rich Ulrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On 22 Dec 1999 14:47:38 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (dennis roberts) wrote:
............
>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?
Why should you? The grade should be on knowledge and the ability
to use it, not on effort. If somebody is born with the knowledge,
he deserves the grade and credit. If someone works full time and
cannot do it, he deserves to fail.
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).
I always use a non-linear grading scheme, with the course grade
rarely lower than the grade on the final. This is the best I can
do; we really should be giving comprehensive exams on many courses
well after the end of the courses.
...............
>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.
What is the purpose of homework? It should be to help learning,
and this cannot be combined with being used for a grade. Those
problems which do not contribute to learning are a waste of time.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
