Grading Explanations, Fall 2020

As per the syllabus (md), the grades were computed by:

Laboratories (70%)
Final exam (30%)

The Process of Grade Determination

The average on the labs was 89.1% (stdev 16.8); as a side-note, this was significantly higher than it has ever been in the past.
The average on the final was 72.0% (stdev 16.5); final grades of zero – those who didn’t take the final – are not counted in this average
When weighted as above, the final course average was a 83.9, which is a B

Due to the very high course average, there was no additional course curve, although we did round up if necessary.

For a given decade, 80 to just under 83 was a B-, 83 to just under 87 was B, and 87 to just under 90 was a B+; similarly for the other decades. The D- range was extended down a bit to a 55 or above, the A range was set at 94 (not 93), and the A+ range is based on a percentage of students in the course – and was a 99. We did not give C- grades, due to how the C- grade interacts with the C/GC/NC scoring and pre-reqs, so anybody would would have gotten a C- instead got a C. Note that for all these scores, we rounded up your final course average if necessary.

Final exam grading

While the final exam went well, we ran into a few issues with the system and the questions that have now been resolved:

Some text fill-in answers that were incorrect were being given credit due to a bug in the system; those no longer get credit (sorry!).
Two of the questions did not have the correct answers entered; we fixed this, and those are now being graded correctly.
We ended up accepting two answers for a few of the multiple-choice questions; for those questions, students got credit if they submitted either of the correct answers.
For some people, the memory question was a fill-in question. This was graded by hand, and was given either 0 or 3 points. The question was what could occasionally cause a seg fault. Any answer that would always cause a seg fault was not given credit (such as following a nullptr).
Some people interpreted the no-spaces comment in the baby yoda encoding to mean that one should encode ‘babyyoda’ (with no space); this was also given full credit.