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Physics 161 General Physics
Mechanics and Particle Dynamics
Spring 2009
Sections 0301-0306
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The average score was 22.7 points; the standard
deviation
was 9.6. The highest score was 50; the lowest was 1.
Please go over your exam carefully when you get it back; read the
solutions, and check our
grading for errors. We grade a lot of exams quickly, and it
happens that we make mistakes. Don't
be shy about it; we want you to find things we got wrong! So look carefully, and if you find something that you
think needs reconsideration, write
a clear explanation
of your case for a regrade, and hand it in to me with your
exam.
Do
not write on the exam itself, though!
That can look like academic dishonesty... then I have to go look
at the scans and compare, send to the honor council...
For multiple choice questions, it will be easy. Question 6 will go to Eric and question
7 to me (Ayush)
Here's what I'll use for grade cuts:
A-range: 36-50.
B-range: 28-35.
C-range: 18-27.
D-range: 8-17.
F-range: 0-7.
Here's what those numbers mean: When it
comes time to
grade,
I create
ficitious students who score at exactly the cutoffs of everything --
participation points, homework, and exams. Then I find the
weighted total score for each of those students, and these become the
cutoffs for final totals. So what I'm telling
you here is what I'll use as the cutoff scores for this exam.
For most students, scores in these other aspects of the course bring
their grades up. It's entirely possible to be below, e.g., the
cut for a B on all of
your exams but above it in all other categories, and end up with a B
for the course.
In that weighted total, this exam is worth 1/4 of
50%, or 12.5 % of
the total grade. But there's an out: I will reduce the
weighting of your worst exam, and increase the weighting of your best
exam. That means that if you do better on the
remaining exams, I'll give less weight to your score on this first
one.
I am doing that precisely because I don't want you to feel as though the
course is lost if you did poorly, and
I want you to have reason to go back and work through that
material. Please do that! You'll
really need to understand the material on this first exam in order to
do well in the exams to come, because it all builds on those same
ideas.
