First Inclass Exam Results
A histogram of the scores is shown on the next page. The average score was 106/120.
Congratulations. This score is higher than any average score recorded on any exam, 1st midterm,
2nd midterm, or final, in the seven previous offering of this course. The average of previous
scores on the first midterm was 85/120.
I am often asked how a particular score might translate to a letter grade. This is difficult to
do since there are many components to the course grade, and students get to drop one of the
midterm scores, or half of the final exam score.
However, I can do it in the inverse way. I have made a table of the 25 and 75 percentile
grades from previous years’ first midterm exams for students who received various course letter
grades. For example, from the table below, one would conclude that 25% of the students who
received an A got a score higher than 109, 25% got a score lower than 93, and the remaining
50% got scores between 93 and 109. There were too few D range grades to do statistics (only 4
from over 400 students), and no one yet has been able to get an E. However, the first midterm
score has not been particularly predictive for students with final grades below B+.
Letter Grade
A
AB+
B
BC’s
25-75 percentile
93-109
81-99
72-93
59-79
49-79
43-68
SPU 18
2
1st Midterm Results