That's All, Folks!

Well, I've submitted the final grades. You should be able to see yours on the SIO website. You can see your final exam grades on the Blackboard site, as well as your final average. If you are interested, here are the statistics for the semester. At the top, you can see the grade cutoffs for the overall grades: A-77.75, B-66.75, C-56.75, D-41.75. At the bottom are statistics for the final exam, including the grade cutoffs: A-80%, B-70%, C-60%, D-45%.

Have a great break!

Asa Palley writes...

Sun, Dec 09, 2007 -- Review Session
For my students in sections F and H - It looks like Professor Handron will
be holding a review session from 1 - 2:30 on Wednesday (check out the
details on the course website blog). So you should all go to that and then
if you have remaining questions, I'll be holding another review session in
Doherty Hall A310 from 2:30 to 4, or beyond if need be. Also, please check
your grades on Blackboard and let me know if anything is missing that
shouldn't be. Note that the homeworks 5, 9, 12 and 13 do not exist so don't
worry if you don't have a grade up. You should only be concerned if an
assignment appears with a "blank" or a "0".

Asa

Also:

"Please pick up any homeworks that you haven't gotten
back outside my office, Wean 7211."

University Course Assessment

No longer must we make due with mere Faculty Course Evaluations. We now have University Course Assessments - newly named, and therefore better!

You can find a link to the UCA's from the Carnegie Mellon portal. It was the second link under "Courses" when I visited. If you have any trouble accessing the site, you can send an email querry to university-course-assessment@andrew.cmu.edu.

Comments on Grading and Grade Cutoffs

I've had a number of people asking me about what the grade cutoffs announced in class mean. Let me take a moment to tell you how I will be calculating your grades. At the end of the semester I will compute a weighted average of your grades, using the weights announced at the start of the semester (15% homework, 60% mid-terms, 25% final).

To determine the final grade cutoffs for these final averages, I will average the grade cutoffs in the same way. For instance, to get the A-cutoff for your final averages, I will compute a weighted average of the A-cutoffs for each assignment. Thus a student who gets precisely the A-cutoff on each assignment will receive an A for the course, but anyone with an average below that will get a B or lower.

For midterm grades, I'll take 60 times your first exam score and 15 times your homework average, add them together, and divide by 75.

If you want to know where you stand right now, you can look at your weighted average (I just added this feature) in Blackboard. You should then compare it to the "Grade Cutoffs" in the "Cumulative Average" section of this (updated) statistics page. That will tell you your current letter grade.

Thursday Recitation Cancelled

Whereas, we just had an exam today, and

Whereas, there is no homework due this Friday, and

Whereas, your TA's are busily grading the 300+ midterm exams,

It is Hereby Resolved that there shall be no recitation this Thursday.

Recitation Rooms Have Changed!

Apparently, anyway. I've talked to more than a few students who have not been able to find their recitations. It seems like some of the locations have changed from whenever your schedules were printed out. You can find the correct (I think!) locations on the Course Information page.

You can find the most up to date information (for all your courses) by following the link to "Schedule of Classes" from the HUB web page.

Homework Deadlines and Submission

I wanted to take a moment to clarify (or at least reiterate) the policies regarding homework. Homework will be due each week on Friday. (Well, most weeks, anyway.) During class on Friday I'll have an envelope for each recitation section. You can put your homework into the envelope for your section.

You also have the option of turning your homework in later during the day. If you choose to do so, you will need to put your assignment into your TA's department mailbox. These mailboxes are located in WEH 6113.

If you choose to submit your homework after class, the deadline is 3:20pm. Homework submitted after that time will be considered late. Late homework is subject to penalties as outlined on the Policies Page of the web site.