Wow, I wish my professor had that policy. I got a 32% on an exam last week, and the class averaged at 54%. Haven't heard a peep from him about it. I've never done so poorly in a class out of incompetence. I feel so fucking stupid thinking about retaking the course.
I had an engineering professor in freshman year give exams expecting the class average to be 50% of the available points, and just graded on a curve based on how many standard deviations we were from the mean. So a 50 was generally good enough for a B. It was not a statistics class, but I think I learned more about statistics from that class than any other.
I did the opposite of this once by being the only one to score 100%
I had a professor in my government and private organizations interactions class who was clear that he'd never given a "true" 100% on a paper before and was confident they never would. They'd just adjust it so that the best paper would get bumped to 100, and everyone else would get the same bump. So if the best was what he'd consider an 85, everyone would get a 15 point bump.
He was essentially making the point that the subject was too complex. I took it to mean that he was a harsh grader and expected way too much out of students.
Later that semester, I had a paper and presentation in which I decided, stupidly, to try and map out the history of the intersection between corporate personhood and campaign finance. I basically wanted to bitch about Citizens United (this was in like 2013).
So I started with Citizens United and worked my way back through Supreme Court cases tracking precedent. I got a little obsessed because I actually found it fascinating, and I ended up having like 25 SCOTUS cases summarized across over 200 years and before I knew it, I had a 60-page paper.
At that point, I knew it was way too long (there had been a 10-page minimum), but I was out of time, so instead of editing it down I just had to turn it in at 11:59pm. My presentation was like 20 minutes in which I was rushed, and I felt pretty bad about it.
The next week the professor came in and opened with 2 announcements. 1 was that there was now a 15-page limit on any papers, and that for the first time in 35 years he'd given a "true" 100. Because of the presentation I'd done, everyone knew it was me that blew the curve, so I didn't know whether to be proud, embarrassed, or scared about it.
The laptop I wrote the paper on was stolen a few months later and I didn't have a backup of the paper, which is a shame because I'd love to read it today and see if it really was good, or if I just wore him out with citations.
Properly made open book exams are not easier. The opposite.
One of the toughest classes I ever took had a final exam that was 24 hours long but it was done at home. It wasn't just open book, it was open internet. The only requirement was that we completed it individually.
It was the first and only exam I slept in the middle of.
It was something like 6 essay style questions in a CS topic, you had to pick 3 to answer.
It was my favourite exam. Not that I generally do badly on more traditional style exams (closed book, cheatsheet, open book, whatever), and not that it was easier because of the format. But it challenged us in real ways rather than test how much we memorized from the course material.
The assignments were similar, assignment 0 was to implement a console to run on an embedded system without an OS or standard libraries or anything other then a UART we could send one byte at a time over. We didn't even have print statements until we implemented them and got them to work (that was fun to debug). It was deliberately set up like that to encourage people to drop the course early so people on the waitlist could get their spot.
Open book where the question merely implies needing to know X without spelling it out is where it really gets hard
That, and also when the questions require actual understanding instead of memorized knowledge.
Also, our professors tended to make open book exams so tight on time that you couldn't realistically look most things up.
Kinda the opposite, but I took a physics exam once where everyone else did so badly that when the professor curved the exam grades mine went up to 114%. Still not quite sure how I managed that.
I once faced the anger of my entire class because my Inability to pay attention to lessons meant i was the only one that knew how to brute force reverse engineer formulas using the fancy calculator and oblivious to the fact the teacher had forgotten to teach that specific material.
My Imposter syndrome peaked when we got the test and teacher pointed at me directly as proof we had covered the material.
I never really understand what the point of grading on an average is. An individual's ability isn't measured against everyone else's ability is measured against the test. So then to take that and change the grade to something else based on what is essentially arbitrary doesn't seem to have any point except to make it look like more people passed than didn't.
Most professors don't have the time or desire to actually make a good test so the curve is a way to compensate for the poor test. There is more pressure in the current day to also pass more than may deserve it as well.
It wasn't a regular thing in my class; the professor just realized he had screwed up and made the exam way too difficult. I agree that doing it for every exam is a bad idea.
Were you in Hogwarts?
Statistically an outlier like that shouldn't count.
Yep. Should have used q2/median
Got 4% on my first (and only) calc midterm. I statistically should have gotten a better grade by randomly picking multiple choice questions and leaving everything else blank... Sadly it didn't provide anything to the rest of my class and I had actually studied for it.
Your calc exam was multiple choice?
Depending on the question, many answers in calculus are:
- 1
- 2
- 0
- invalid
This is especially true if they don't let you have a calculator.
They say leave the rest blank, so there was some multiple choice questions, which is fairly normal. Well, at least I think it is, all the maths tests ive done have had at least a few multiple choice qs (UK)
Well not the whole thing. Maybe a third of the questions or something like that.
Listened to a podcast yesterday where the lesson was don't procrastinate except when it helps you because someone else implements the solution for you. Same vibes.
For anyone who wants to repeat OP's experience:
Also I once scored a 3 out of 200 on a final exam and failed the fuck out of a class.
I will never understand churros. Chocolate or cream stuffed churros? Sure, that's a mini hot ice cream pocket. But churros by themselves? Maybe the first 20 seconds after they're cooked they taste alright, but anything after is like eating granulated sugar on styrofoam
Well, to be fair, OP did smoke weed and ate churros, so that might have influenced how OP could eat so many churros.
Maybe the first 20 seconds after they’re cooked
Yup.
Mean vs median.
Math prof ought to know better than to include outliers.
Maths prof, not statistics prof.
