Brief description of what each variable represents:

ATTEND1 - ATTEND10 = attendance in discussion sections. 0 if absent, 1 if present.

HW1 and HW2 = grade on the two homework assignments

QUIZ1 - QUIZ8 = grade on the 8 quizzes (note: if you did the weather extra credit, I took your lowest quiz grade and made it a 100 %)

WARGRADE = your grade on the Iraq conflict paper. An "A" was worth 100%, a "B" worth 89%, and a "C" worth 79%. If you didn't turn in a paper, you received an "F", which translates to 0%.

ONLINE = your grade for the on-line longitudinal assignment. Although there were opportunities to participate more than 10 times, I graded this as if there were 10 occasions during which you could have participated. If you did it 10 times, you received a 100%. If you completed the on-line questionnaire 4 times, you received a 40%.

As stated in class, it was important that you use the same alias each time you participate in order to receive credit. I noticed some typos in the way people entered their alias in the database, and I tried to correct as many as I possibly could. If you think there is a discrepancy between what you see here and the number of times you believe you participated, you will need to do the following: (a) log back onto the exercise (the link is listed in the updates section of our class webpage), (b) print the page that lists your web participation, (c) bring that print out to me during the final exam. I will double check the records and allocate you the appropriate credit if there is in fact a discrepancy between the reported credit and what the log-in page shows.

TEST1 - TEST5 = your grade on each of the 5 tests. (Note: These grades are displayed rounded to two decimal places.)

HIGH1 - HIGH4 = your four highest exam scores. Recall that your lowest of the 5 exams does not count. These are your highest four exam scores. The scores you see here might be slightly different from what is reported on TEST1 - TEST5 because I added 1% point to each exam. (Yes, a little bit of a bonus!) I did this to account for any discrepancies that you might see in the rounding of your grades.

GRADE = your final grade in this course.

GRADE was computed in the following manner

.60*mean(high1, high2, high3, high4) +
.15*mean(quiz1,quiz2,quiz3,quiz4,quiz5,quiz6,quiz7,quiz8) +
.05*wargrade +
.10*mean(attend1,attend2,attend3,attend4,attend5,attend6,attend7,attend8,attend9,atten10,hw1,hw2) +
.10*online +
.01 (a free point just for being a great class)

In other words, the average of your four highest exams counts toward 60% of your grade. As discussed in class on April 9th, your average quiz grade accounts for 15% of your grade and war paper counts toward 5% of your grade. (The war paper and the quiz grades, taken together, account for 20% of your grade, with the war paper counting as 1/4 of this 20% chunk.) Your section activities (i.e., attendence and homeworks) account for 10% of your grade and the online questionnaire exercise counted toward 10% of your grade (as discussed in the March 10th lecture). I've also added an extra percentage point to everyone's grade. I did this so that those of you who were right on the threshold between, for example, a B and an A, could be pushed over the threshold.

LETTER = your final letter grade in this course. Letter grades were assigned using the traditional 10% system (i.e., A = .90-1.00, B = .80 - .89, C = .70 - .79, D = .60 - .69, F = 0 - .59).

If you see an error in the way your grades are reported here, please let me know as soon as possible.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The numbers that you see in the spread sheet are rounded to two decimal places. In many cases, however, your actual grade may be slightly different from what you see. For example, if your true exam score for exam 2 is a .84443, you might see .84 instead of .84443. Your final GRADE is based on the true number, not the rounded number. Thus, if you calculate your grade by hand, the GRADE you get may be slightly different (either slightly higher or slightly lower) from the one that is printed here. The GRADE you see is your *real* grade. Please don't contact me if you're right on the edge and want me to move your grade up. I've already added 1% point to everyone's exam and to everyone's final grade. As a consequence, people who were near the threshold have crossed it.

Click here to see the grades. The grade file may take a few moments to download.