The actual grades are posted here. This page describes what the labels mean, as well as how your grade was computed.

The grades were last updated on May 6th, 2004.

Here is an explanation of what each variable label refers to.

e1 - e5 - your grades on exams 1- 5. (The 5th exam was the final.) Note: I have left blank your lowest exam score. That score does not count toward the computation of your class grade.

quiz1 - quiz8 - your grade on quizzes 1 - 8. These are expressed as percentages correct. I have dropped your lowest quiz grade in the calculation of your grade, nonetheless, all 8 quizzes are listed here.

hmwk1 - hmwk2 - your grade for homeworks. These are expressed as percentages.

attend - your grade for section/lab attendance. This is expressed as a percentage.

gradef - your numeric grade in the class. This is explained in more depth below.

letter - your letter grade for class. This is based on the standard 10% rule (e.g., C = gradef >= 70 and gradef < 80)

How was your grade computed? Here is the formula I used to compute final grades:

gradet = .60*mean(e1, e2, e3, e4, e5) + .20*mean(quiz1, quiz2, quiz3, quiz4, quiz5, quiz6, quiz7, quiz8) + .20*mean(hmwk1, hmwk2, attend, attend, attend, attend, attend).


A few things to note about this formula:

1. The average of your best four exams is weighted by 60%. In other words, your exams count toward 60% of your final grade. If you took the final and don't see the grade posted here, that is because your final grade was the lowest grade. The lowest of your 5 exams has been substituted with a dot.

2. The average of your quizzes counts 20% toward your final grade. Overall, people did fairly well on the quizzes, so I didn't drop any quiz grades. Updated on April 30th: I am now dropping the lowest quiz grade. Thus, the average of your quizzes is based on your 7 best quiz grades--not all 8 quiz grades.

3. The lab activities count 20% toward your final grade. Each assignment counts equally, with the exception of attendence, which I counted 5 times because I thought it was more important that the two homeworks.

4. If you try to calculate your grade yourself and find that it differs in some minor way from what we've posted, those difference are due only to rounding errors (or due to computational errors on your part). The grades posted here are the correct grades--the grades that consider the many decimal places that may exist in some of the averages--decimal places that can't be seen easily on your computer screen due to the limitations of printing extended digits. Grades will not be rounded up. Thus, if your grade is currently an 89.99999, this will be recorded as a B. There is no need to e-mail me to tell me how unfair this is; I'm already aware of how unfair it is.

5. If you have questions about your grade, please contact your TA before contacting me. If your TA finds an error in your grade, he or she should e-mail me directly in order to have the error corrected. These corrections must be made no later than Monday afternoon.

6. If you are a few tenths of a point away from a higher letter grade, please do not bug your TA for extra points on past assignments. You have had plenty of time now to determine whether your older assignments were graded correctly and fairly. Like you, your TAs also have final exams to study for and they probably will not appreciate you taking their time to re-evaluate assignments they have already taken the time to grade. If you have noticed in error in what is listed here, however, please contact your TA as soon as possible.