Re: Averaging Grades
 

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My fiancee is a T.A. in a music class and she has to figure out grades for the kids in the class. There are five things the kids are graded on and they all are weighted differently:

Tests: 45%
Quizzes: 20%
Participation/Attendance: 15%
Online Assignments: 10%
Concert Reports: 10%

Anyone know how to explain how to figure out how to give the grades?

Thanks.

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Take the grade vector and the weight vector in five dimensional space and multiply their lengths and the cosine of the angle between them.

Re: Averaging Grades
 

For real? Education is so dirtpoor today if even the teacher can't figure this out.

Re: Averaging Grades
 

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i have to way to know if this is right

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It's definitely right, and I'm sure you could understand a proof if you took the time to bother with it.

Re: Averaging Grades
 

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For real? Education is so dirtpoor today if even the teacher can't figure this out.

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It's better than it's ever been, sadly. Probably OP and his fiancee once solved problems like this using the "plug it in" approach and even got okay grades in high school math.

I've met many people who've passed calculus classes and are yet unable to grasp basic concepts. I mean, look at Monty Hall.

Oh, my mother and a few of her coworkers once spent an hour trying to explain a concept to another coworker. The other coworker was terrified of air travel after 9/11, and she wanted to find a way of bringing a bomb with her on a certain flight. Apparently she heard that the likelihood of two bombs independently being present on the same plane was extremely small, and so she thought that if she brought one bomb onboard, it would reduce the likelihood of another bomb being present. The attempts to explain her error failed, but she did give up on making a bomb.

Edit - coworker had a master's degree, btw. I think she made six figures.

Re: Averaging Grades
 

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For real? Education is so dirtpoor today if even the teacher can't figure this out.

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It's better than it's ever been, sadly.

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What makes you think that?

Re: Averaging Grades
 

My knowledge of the quality of education in the past, the Flynn effect, my memories of my own schooling, the increasing ability of students to tackle harder subject matter. Then again, I'm only talking about the US and about the general trend (whether we're better than we were 10 years ago I don't know, but we're better than we were 100 years ago).

Re: Averaging Grades
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My fiancee is a T.A. in a music class and she has to figure out grades for the kids in the class. There are five things the kids are graded on and they all are weighted differently:

Tests: 45%
Quizzes: 20%
Participation/Attendance: 15%
Online Assignments: 10%
Concert Reports: 10%

Anyone know how to explain how to figure out how to give the grades?

Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Take the grade vector and the weight vector in five dimensional space and multiply their lengths and the cosine of the angle between them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Before this, make sure you write the grade vector and weight vector with respect to the same basis, imo.

Re: Averaging Grades
 

If she asked her students I bet at least a few of them would know, assuming they are over the age of 8.

Re: Averaging Grades
 

thanks for the help guys.

i came in here for help because i'm not good at doing these things without sitting down to figure them out and i was on my way out the door last night.

Nielso,

you're an idiot. if you're basing the state of american education on whether my girlfriend wasn't sure about how to do this, you're an even bigger idiot. she's not a math person. that's why she's not going to be a math teacher. she's a terrific piano player. that's why she's going to teach music. haven't you ever taken a class that you had no interest in taking and were unsure of how to do something? there's no difference.

and wow, there are a lot of morons in this thread.

anyway, i digress, thanks guys.

and bork, if you even need help actually becoming a winning poker player, let me know.

Re: Averaging Grades
 

Noonan,

There's something that the above (serious) replies neglected, which is that the maximum score on each type of assignment might not be identical. In fact, they usually aren't, unless the instructor has been careful to construct the grades that way. For example, if the tests are graded out of 100 points, but the quizzes only 20 points, the above formula will NOT work.

You need to convert all the scores to the same range, multiply them by their individual weights, and add up the result. The easiest way to convert all the grades to the same range is to just divide each score by the maximum possible score for that type of grade.

An example:

Tests: 45%, maximum test grade is 100 pts.
Quizzes: 20%, maximum quiz grade is 20 pts.
Participation/Attendance: 15%, Max participation/attendance grade is 10 pt.
Online Assignments: 10%, Max online Assignments grade is 100 pts.
Concert Reports: 10%, Max concert report is 5 pts.

Assume a student has an 85 test average, a 15 quiz average, a 10 part./att. grade, a 95 online grade, and a 4 concert report grade.

That student's final grade would be given by:

(85/100)*0.45 +
(15/20)*0.2 +
(10/10)*0.15 +
(95/100)*0.1 +
(4/5)*0.1 = 0.86 = 86%