Monday Apr. 29, 2013
"Blue Green" from Hans Hutchison before class this afternoon (I
wasn't able to find the song online)
Lightning photography will be the subject of a Tuesday
night talk at the Center for Creative Photography
Who: UA Department of Atmospheric Sciences
presents Ralph H Wetmore II, Photographer
What: Lecture event "Fire in the Sky: An Evening of
Lightning"
Where: Center for Creative Photography, on the
University of Arizona Main Campus
1030 N. Olive Rd., Tucson, AZ 85721 (nearest
cross-streets Speedway & Park)
When: April 30, 2013 at 5:30pm
The course evaluation was conducted
during the first 15 or 20 minutes of the class today.
Grade summaries were also distributed. An
example is shown below.
Moving from top to bottom you'll find your
percentage grade on each of the 4 quizzes.
The next line lists the number of extra credit points you have
earned during the semester on Optional Assignments.
The score on your experiment report and the number of 1S1P
points you have earned is listed next. To figure out
your writing percentage grade I add your experiment report
score to the number of 1S1P points you have earned this
semeste then divide the result by 80 so it is possible for the
writing grade to be over 100%.
Two averages are then computed. The first is the average
of your 4 quiz scores and your writing percentage grade.
Any extra credit is added to the average. This is the
number that has to be 90.0 or above to get out of the final
exam. Fortunately there weren't any students with 89.9%.
If you do have to take the Final Exam (and note the grade
summary explicitly says whether you DO or DO NOT have to take
the exam) a second average is computed. In this
case your lowest quiz score is dropped.
Your overall grade in the class will depend on this second
average (with the lowest quiz score dropped) and your score on
the Final Exam.
We did a couple of example calculations that determine what
score you would need on the final to either raise your grade
or to preserve the grade you currently have.
Let's look at the first situation.
In this case I try to maximize the benefit that the Final Exam
can have on your overall grade. 40% of your overall grade is
determined by the Final Exam score.
In this example we assume your current grade is 77.5%, a
C+. You want to raise your overall grade to a B (80%).
The calculation shows that you would need to score 83.8% on the
exam to end up with a B.
The other option is that you're happy with your current
grade. What do you need on the exam to keep that grade?
In this case the exam score is only 20% of
your overall grade. This is to minimize the damage it
can do.
We'll use the same 77.5% for the current grade and figure out
how badly you can do on the exam and still end up with a C.
The calculation shows you only need to earn 40% to keep the C.
