Semester

"Michael Wolf" wrote in message news:Xns974517BBDCBB0mwolf@195.130.132.70...
> Students with only 40% passed????

A Physics professor that I once had claimed that if someone got 100% on one
of his tests, he had failed in testing them on everything that they knew...
He said that he made his tests hard / lengthy so that he could be sure that
that would not be the case... He would fit the grades to a bell curve at the
end of the semester, but it was rather disconcerting knowing that at the end
if he didn't, you would fail the course...

On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 01:20:01 GMT, Michael Wolf
<michael.wolf@advalvasstopspam.be> wrote:

>"Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote in
>news:1136587595.675859.206930@o13g2000cwo.googleg roups.com:
>
>> Grumman-581 wrote:
>>> "Dillon Pyron" wrote in message
>>> news:jlunr1tv8pr40erctmkffrdn0tr9mujll2@4ax.com...
>>> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!!
>>
>> Did anyone have a grade point LESS than 4.0?
>>
>> This is a serious comment, not to mean that it applies to Dillon.
>> In today's grade-inflation and make-everyone-feel-good
>> environment, every student expects to get an A in every course.
>> Whether they should have passed or flunked is beside the point.
>>
>> I had quit the rat race 5 years ago when most of the professors
>> and administrators sold their souls to the Devil to appease the
>> students. I graded the students on their comprehension of the
>> course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A and 40% a
>> passing D.
>>
>
>Students with only 40% passed????
>
>
>--
>Michael Wolf
>
>-----
>
>Cthulhu For President.
>Why settle for the lesser evil?
>
>remove stopspam to reply
Well he did say he was stressed by the rat race of being a teacher
(cough)

Matthias Voss <spammat.voss@gmx.de> wrote in news:dpqoh1$d39$03$1@news.t-
online.com:

> Michael Wolf wrote:
>
>> "Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote in
>>>
>>>I had quit the rat race 5 years ago when most of the professors
>>>and administrators sold their souls to the Devil to appease the
>>>students. I graded the students on their comprehension of the
>>>course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A and 40% a
>>>passing D.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Students with only 40% passed????
>
> Makes me wonder, too.
>
> I still remember the uproar of medicine students at the
> C.A.U. medical in the town of Kiel, when they failed
> students with results below 50%. Not that the treshold was
> new. Only this time the tests severeness was met mit a
> sufficient number to cause grief to some.
>
> What these students were unaware of, however, was the fact
> that a flunk ratio of, say 30%, is nothing unfamiliar, and
> as well tolerated, with students of engineering; while these
> are accustomed to passing tresholds of 60 % for a D grade.
>
> Matthias
>
>

With us it was simple: you had to have at least 55% in general and at
least 50% for every single course. WHen you had more than 60% you didn't
have to do a 2nd term for that course if you didn't pass in general.

--
Michael Wolf

-----

Cthulhu For President.
Why settle for the lesser evil?

remove stopspam to reply

In article <11rv5knp0d9b480@news.supernews.com>,
"Popeye" <Popeye@Finalprotectivefire.com> wrote:

> I'm getting my ass kicked up here, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef, where ya been?
>
> Jammer says there's no such thing as 102%!

Well, on average, and he doesn't know anything about averages.

--
"A bunch of us went down to Gettysburg.
Some of us didn't come back.
If you weren't there, you'll never understand." --Unknown Infantryman

On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 12:21:33 -0800, Jammer Six <jammersix@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>In article <11rv5knp0d9b480@news.supernews.com>,
> "Popeye" <Popeye@Finalprotectivefire.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm getting my ass kicked up here, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef, where ya been?
>>
>> Jammer says there's no such thing as 102%!
>
>Well, on average, and he doesn't know anything about averages.
>
>--
>"A bunch of us went down to Gettysburg.
>Some of us didn't come back.
>If you weren't there, you'll never understand." --Unknown Infantryman
I don't know, he seems pretty average to me.

Thus spake "Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> :

>Grumman-581 wrote:
>> "Dillon Pyron" wrote in message
>> news:jlunr1tv8pr40erctmkffrdn0tr9mujll2@4ax.com...
>> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!!
>
>Did anyone have a grade point LESS than 4.0?

ACC makes class statistics available to all students.

A&P started with 25 and finished with 17. The average drop rate was
40%, so we were above average. There were 3 As, 6 Bs and 8 Cs, no Ds
or Fs, they all figured things out much earlier. The class average
was a 78 something.

Philosphy started with 24 and finished with 12. One A, 9 Bs and 2 Cs.
Average for the class was an 83.

Psych was a hard one to make a weak grade in. She gave all sorts of
easy points, but some people totally screwed up. Turn in 6 questions
on three chapters for the test and get a 100. Turn them in 3 days
late and get a 75. So the average was around an 80 for each of the
four assignments. 28 started, 23 finished. Two As, 12 Bs, 7 Cs, 1 D.

Speech started 26, finished 18. 2 As, 11 Bs, 4 Cs and 1 F.

College is a lot harder than I remember. I consistently put in 40 to
50 hours outside of class. I watched almost no TV and, in a most
telling measure, I had 3 beers all semester, two of them on
Thanksgiving.

When an episode of NCIS talked about a bullet stopping in the medial
adductor longus, I knew where it was and the damage it had done along
the way. This shit actually stuck.

>
>This is a serious comment, not to mean that it applies to Dillon.
>In today's grade-inflation and make-everyone-feel-good
>environment, every student expects to get an A in every course.
>Whether they should have passed or flunked is beside the point.

An interesting comment. Every one of my courses was taught by a full
or associate prof. No grad students in a two year college. I've
heard that courses like English and some basic Math were push overs,
but I didn't see that in the levels I took.

>
>I had quit the rat race 5 years ago when most of the professors
>and administrators sold their souls to the Devil to appease the
>students. I graded the students on their comprehension of the
>course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A and 40% a
>passing D.
>

My psych prof normalized the grads. This didn't necessarily mean
getting a boost, as she also took grades down when the As were out of
the norm. Not that it ever affected me. I needed a 69 in the final
for that course to get an A. So I got a 94. In A&P we dropped the
lowest exam and practical. I dropped an 86, which was the high grade
for that exam.

>In a typical class of size 40 for an undergrad course, usually
>20 or more had dropped before the course was finished, and
>many of those classes had only 2 or 3 A's, and several F's
>among those who had NOT dropped.

Only an idiot should get an F in a well taught class. If you can't
figure it out by the drop date ... ACC has a policy where a professor
can drop any student whose grades at mid term are insufficient to make
a D at the end of the semester. HINT HINT.

>
>That was AFTER I had watered down the course (which I had
>taught for 25 years) to such a low level that any further erosion
>of standards would have been a crime. The other students
>enrolled in the same course taught by others would get mostly
>As and hardly any one ever flunked in those sections.
>
>Every semester students would line up at the Department
>Chairs office complaining about my teaching -- to no avail.

When I was in grad school I was offered $100 for a D. A D!!!!! The
worst part of it was, he wasn't close enough to a D to make it worth
$100. He also made the mistake of saying it in front of my office
mate. So instead of flunking him I had to report him to the dept
head, who reported him to the dean, who reported him to the academic
VP. All this took 3 hours. Immigration was notified of his change of
status before 5 and I was told deportation proceedings started the
next moring.

>
>But the saddest consequence of this erosion of learning hand-
>in-hand with grade inflation is that I have found (in the
>sci.stat.math newsgroup this year) that some of the PROFESSORS
>and TEACHERS of statistics are worse than some of those I
>had flunked in the first course in statistics! No exaggeration.
>
>Just do a keyword search on any of these words "quacks",
>"blackmagic" and "malpractice" in the ng sci.stat.math, and
>you'll see why. Below were some of the threads I initiated:
>
--
dillon

666 permissions of the beast

Matthias Voss wrote:
> Michael Wolf wrote:
>
> > "Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote in
> >>
> >>I had quit the rat race 5 years ago when most of the professors
> >>and administrators sold their souls to the Devil to appease the
> >>students. I graded the students on their comprehension of the
> >>course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A and 40% a
> >>passing D.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Students with only 40% passed????
>
> Makes me wonder, too.

Well, you folks in this group has an attention span of about 3 lines,
and that's why the cited paragraph was INCORRECTLY
interpreted by EVERYONE who commented on it, because it was
cited out of context.

The points that were missed were that:

1. Hardly anyone failed the same course in other sections taught
by those who sold their souls to the Devil, while out of a typical
class of mine of size 40, over 50% flunked because those 20
who had dropped betore the end of the exam would have gotten
F's, and several of those who stayed to the end did get F's.

2. The exams test comprehension (details in one of the threads I
cited, e.g, open book, open notes, nothing to memorize) and
I warned the students on Day 1 not to let the 75% for an A or
the 40% for passing give them the impression that nearly
everyone would get A's as in the other classes. That's why
only 2 or 3 out of 40 got A's, and they had to EARN it. The
Athletic Department used to send their students on academic
probation to my classes because they drew the wrong
inference about the 40% for passing. They had to be EARNED
too. To the best of my recollection, none of the All American
athletes sent to my classes ever passed! They got the idea,
and hadn't sent any student to my classes the past 20 years.
Why should they? They learned what the classes were who
had the most "popular" and "best rated" teachers who never
flunk anyone and even "tree stumps" got A's, while students
complained bitterly about my "poor teaching" because I held
the line on standards which they didn't meet, and got the low
grades of failing grades they DESERVED.

THAT's the rat race I chose to abandon. I could hold the line on
standards because I was already a tenured FULL professor in
1977, in part because of my excellence in teaching! The easiest
thing anyone can do is to hand out A's indiscriminantly. I am one
of those few who held onto our PRINCIPLE of upholding the
standards of college education, in spite of the unjustified and
unwarranted complained by those "tree stumps" who disguised
themselve as college students.

Many professors whose employment status, promotion, and salary
all depend on the abomination of "student rating" which many (but
not all) students used to "blackmail" the professors into giving
unearned and undeserved high grades, in exchange for their
POOR teaching and EASY grading! THAT's what I meant by
"they sold their souls to the Devil".

My soul was, and is, not for sale at ANY price.

End of this mini lecture and Sunday Sermon.

You have to read the threads I referenced in sci.stat.math for
many of details relative to the points stated here.

-- Bob.


> I still remember the uproar of medicine students at the
> C.A.U. medical in the town of Kiel, when they failed
> students with results below 50%. Not that the treshold was
> new. Only this time the tests severeness was met mit a
> sufficient number to cause grief to some.
>
> What these students were unaware of, however, was the fact
> that a flunk ratio of, say 30%, is nothing unfamiliar, and
> as well tolerated, with students of engineering; while these
> are accustomed to passing tresholds of 60 % for a D grade.
>
> Matthias

"Grumman-581" <grumman581@DIE-SPAMMER-SCUM@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:yc2wf.36039$9e.14715@tornado.texas.rr.com...
> "Michael Wolf" wrote in message
news:Xns974517BBDCBB0mwolf@195.130.132.70...
> > Students with only 40% passed????
>
> A Physics professor that I once had claimed that if someone got 100% on
one
> of his tests, he had failed in testing them on everything that they
knew...
> He said that he made his tests hard / lengthy so that he could be sure
that
> that would not be the case... He would fit the grades to a bell curve at
the
> end of the semester, but it was rather disconcerting knowing that at the
end
> if he didn't, you would fail the course...
>

I had a physics prof who said that if you were happy with your grade at the
end of the semester you didn't have to take the final exam but could instead
accept whatever grade you happened to have before the exam. That same prof
also said that if you took the final exam (it was cumulative) and scored
higher than your grade in the class, he would give you your exam grade as
your class grade becuase you had demonstrated that you understood the
material he had covered. He also graded on a curve. The first test we took
in his class, I scored a 99. The next closest score to mine was a 78 and
the average score was a 34. I knew I had an A in the class after that one
test.

Chris Guynn wrote:
> "Grumman-581" <grumman581@DIE-SPAMMER-SCUM@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:yc2wf.36039$9e.14715@tornado.texas.rr.com...

> He would fit the grades to a bell curve at the end of the semester,

> He also graded on a curve.

Neither of your professors know what they were doing.

When they made up a test, they should know what grade would be an A,
B, etc. Enrollment in a class is selected by the students. Why
should
a professor who knows what he's doing do such a DUMB thing as
grading on a curve -- that's the most commonly abused grading method
in education, for no justifiable reason whatsoever -- unless there is a
contract when a student enrolls in the school that there are quotas for
each grade (of course there's none).

Why should a professor give anyone an A if the class happens (by
chance) to be a bunch of dumb and lazy students none of whom
can meet the standard for an A or B for the course? Then they
should get Cs, Ds, and Fs.

Conversely, why should a professor penalize a class of hard
working geniuses who happen (by chance) to be enrolled in
the same class, and ALL of them meet the standard for a grade
of A? Then they should ALL get grades of As,

Collectively, these grades will even out over a period of time
over tens of thousands of students and they would naturally
tend to have a "normal" or Gaussian shape, where the bulk of
the grades will be in the middle and thins out on both ends,
which can be explained by the Central Limit Theorem.

Statistically speaking, there is absolutely no justification for
anyone to think that a randomly selected small group of
students should perform in accordance with the distribution
of some curve; or worse, assign grades in a small class by a
"curve".

-- Bob.

"Reef Fish" wrote in message
news:1136958371.721539.258190@g49g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> Neither of your professors know what they were doing.

Awh, 'ell Reefy, I never *claimed* they knew what they were doing... <grin>

It's not like you can tell a tenured full professor that he's doing it
wrong, right? The end result is just try to survive the course and see if
you can make up the GPA in some other course...