About ICS 23 Course Grades
for Winter 2008
Congratulations! You all (as a group) did quite well this quarter as compared to other ICS23 classes; the course average was significantly higher than in recent previous quarters. In particular, you will note a large number of A's!
After looking over the distribution of scores, and thinking about the difficulty of the assignments and exams, I decided to lower the cut-off points between grades by 10 points from the ones published in the Course Reference.
Refer to the posted spreadsheet for the number of students who received each grade.
The scores on the course spreadsheet are in order of the last four digits of the student ID number (Last 4 Digits). After your ID is a flag indicating whether you are enrolled through extension. Next are the scores for your labs and their total, weighted by the fraction of the total lab grade each lab was worth. Next comes the number of points you attempted (no credit for labs you didn't turn in!). In the next column is the percentage of points you lost; then is the average number of points lost by the class as a whole. Then comes your total lab score adjusted to compensate you if you had a grader that was harder than the easiest one: since we had only one grader this quarter, the easiest and hardest grader were the same, and so your adjusted score is the same as your unadjusted one. Note that scores above 4 count as a kind of extra credit-- 4 points is considered 100% of the possible points for a lab.
Next is your midterm and final exam scores. Then appears the course total; it was computed out of 100 points, weighted to the values we published in the Course Reference.
Your letter grade appears next; if you are taking the class P/NP, the Registrar will change your grade to P or NP as appropriate. Sometimes, instead of a grade, you'll see the notation "NR"--Grade Not Recorded--because there are pending issues that must be resolved before a grade can be given; if you see an "NR" grade for yourself and have not yet contacted me, do so!
Do check over your scores; if you find any which are incorrect because of a clerical or procedural error and that would change your final grade, contact me by email (my schedule during break tends to be erratic). Note the only reasons for which I can change a grade are if a procedural or clerical error occurred--UCI rules.
The posted spreadsheet also shows several statistics on the course and coursework that might interest you.
I will hold onto your midterm and final exam Scantron sheets into the first couple of weeks of next quarter, in case you have questions.
My best wishes an enjoyable break!
Norm