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Scuba Forum / General / January 2006Semester
Well folks, the semester ended on the 16th, but we've been on vacation since then, and my laptop was in the shop for a week (don't use CompUSA). Anatomy & Physiology 4 hours 97% A 16 credit Intro to Psych 3 97% A 12 Philosophy Ethics 3 98% A 12 Intro to Public Speech 3 92% A 12 In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!!  Signaturedillon 666 permissions of the beast > Well folks, the semester ended on the 16th, but we've been on vacation > since then, and my laptop was in the shop for a week (don't use [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! Congrats, Dillon!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course..; We wouldn't have expected anything less. :-) Bjórrúnar skaltu Dillon Pyron <dmpyronINVALID@austin.rr.com> rista > Philosophy Ethics 3 98% A 12 Obviously your prof didn't read your posts here. > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! I've had semesters like that before... They were all CS courses, of course... There's a certain satisfaction to being on the Dean's List one semester right after being on academic probation from the previous semester (I had only taken one class -- Statistics -- for that summer semester)... > > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! Did anyone have a grade point LESS than 4.0? This is a serious comment, not to mean that it applies to Dillon. In today's grade-inflation and make-everyone-feel-good environment, every student expects to get an A in every course. Whether they should have passed or flunked is beside the point. I had quit the rat race 5 years ago when most of the professors and administrators sold their souls to the Devil to appease the students. I graded the students on their comprehension of the course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A and 40% a passing D. In a typical class of size 40 for an undergrad course, usually 20 or more had dropped before the course was finished, and many of those classes had only 2 or 3 A's, and several F's among those who had NOT dropped. That was AFTER I had watered down the course (which I had taught for 25 years) to such a low level that any further erosion of standards would have been a crime. The other students enrolled in the same course taught by others would get mostly As and hardly any one ever flunked in those sections. Every semester students would line up at the Department Chairs office complaining about my teaching -- to no avail. But the saddest consequence of this erosion of learning hand- in-hand with grade inflation is that I have found (in the sci.stat.math newsgroup this year) that some of the PROFESSORS and TEACHERS of statistics are worse than some of those I had flunked in the first course in statistics! No exaggeration. Just do a keyword search on any of these words "quacks", "blackmagic" and "malpractice" in the ng sci.stat.math, and you'll see why. Below were some of the threads I initiated: Newsgroups: sci.stat.math,sci.stat.edu Subject: Educators or Salesmen Who Sold Their Souls to the Devil? Date: 12 May 2005 11:36:02 -0700 This thread ran 285 posts, by 35 discussants. Newsgroups: sci.stat.math,sci.stat.edu Subject: My Editorial on Exams, Grades, and (Statistical) Education Date: 11 May 2005 20:54:42 -0700 which ran 231 posts, by 24 discussants. Below is the excerpt of my verbal discription of a cartoon, which is VERY relevant to the phenomenon of "ALL A's": I am reading a fascinating book about Paul Erdos (the eccentric mathematician) now, in which there is a cartoon from Doonsbury about this "grade inflation" phenomenon. I can't reproduce the cartoon here, but will describe it so you'll get the idea: Frame 1: Professor thinking, "seems logical ..." Frame 2: Professor thinking, "But is it politically tenable?" Frame 3: Chairman of Department talking to Professor, "Jules, I've been meaning to talk to you about that B+ you handed out last month." Frame 4: "As Chairman of the Math Department, I think I was entitled to some warning. You must have known it would provoke a firestorm." Frame 5: Professor, "Actually Tom, I didn't. I thought it was still possible to assign a grade based on performance and merit." Frame 6: Chairman, "That's a bit naive, Jules. This is a new generation of students. They insist on a decent comfort level." Frame 7: Chairman, "It doesn't matter if you have a kid who believes 1 + 1 = 3. From now on, work AROUND it!" Frame 8: Professor, "Work around it?" Chairman, "Jules, you have to make math ACCESSIBLE." And what about this: Newsgroups: sci.stat.math,sci.stat.edu Subject: An absurdity in High School Valedictorians' GPA Date: 29 May 2005 10:06:15 -0700 This was based on a newspaper article of the Valedictorians in Choo-Choo, with my comment: RF> But the real absurdity is that 15 (FIFTEEN) of them had RF> GPA that exceeded the "perfect" 4.0, ranging from 4.1 to 4.57! Dillon, you'd better work a bit harder! ;^) > I've had semesters like that before... They were all CS courses, of > course... There's a certain satisfaction to being on the Dean's List one > semester right after being on academic probation from the previous semester > (I had only taken one class -- Statistics -- for that summer semester)... May be the Dean had a few words with those professors who had put you in the unthinkable state of an "academic probation". The professors learned to work around whatever crap you had produced and put you in your "comfort zone", by assigning the automatic "A"! Now it didn't seem as bad as it was when readers in rec.scuba didn't know for YEARS that a statistical "mode" is not an "average". Jammer is still wallowing in his ignorance about those terms. :-) -- Bob. <cut a bunch of self serving dribble> Retired from "the rat race" and you were a teacher ? I'd hate to hear what you would call a jambed zipper > <cut a bunch of self serving dribble> > > Retired from "the rat race" and you were a teacher ? Yes, from a profession full of those who sold their souls to the Devil in their rat race to appease the sorry product of what they produced in society today. > I'd hate to hear what you would call a jambed zipper A "Rod"? -- Bob. >> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! > > Did anyone have a grade point LESS than 4.0? Yes, most of us drunks. I'm getting my a.s kicked up here, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef, where ya been? Jammer says there's no such thing as 102%! I had all my tinkertoys out, but couldn't count that high. I though you had my back? > >> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! > > > > Did anyone have a grade point LESS than 4.0? That was in part with reference to the Doonsbury cartoon, about what the Dean having confront the professor who shocked the world by giving a grade of B+. > Yes, most of us drunks. > > I'm getting my a.s kicked up here, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef, where ya been? The a.ses I kicked are those who called themselves "educators" while they are salesmen of diplomas/degrees not worth the paper on which it's printed. You confirmed my suspicion that you didn't get either of the e-mail I sent you within the last two weeks -- one around Christmas, and another a few days ago asking if you ever got it. Send me a line so I know I have your current e-mail address. > Jammer says there's no such thing as 102%! Nodubya Bush used to say he supported this-or-that 1,000%, > I had all my tinkertoys out, but couldn't count that high. I saw a news article yesterday about the discovery of the largest prime number -- which meant only the largest known number that is prime because there is no such thing as the largest prime number. That number is something of the order of 2 to the power 300,000,000+. That puts googol (not google), which is 1 followed by 100 zeros, to shame. In your spare time, you can start counting the number of digits in that largest known prime. > I though you had my back? Nah. Don't think you ever claimed to be an "educator" in an "institution of higher learning". Did you? -- Bob. > I'm getting my a.s kicked up here, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef, where ya been? > > Jammer says there's no such thing as 102%! Well, on average, and he doesn't know anything about averages. Signature"A bunch of us went down to Gettysburg. Some of us didn't come back. If you weren't there, you'll never understand." --Unknown Infantryman >> I'm getting my a.s kicked up here, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef, where ya been? >> >> Jammer says there's no such thing as 102%! > >Well, on average, and he doesn't know anything about averages. I don't know, he seems pretty average to me. >> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! > [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A and 40% a > passing D. Students with only 40% passed???? SignatureMichael Wolf ----- Cthulhu For President. Why settle for the lesser evil? remove stopspam to reply >>> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! >> [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > >Students with only 40% passed???? Well he did say he was stressed by the rat race of being a teacher (cough) > O >>> [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >>Students with only 40% passed???? >>Michael Wolf > Well he did say he was stressed by the rat race of being a teacher > (cough) We have a saying that teachers are right in the morning, and off duty in the afternoon. Matthias I must have been schooled on another planet. Where I was 70% was passing, below was some degree of failing. The only "bell" was the one to tell us to go to the next class. Sounds to me like a lot of teachers got real lazy and decided no matter how badly they taught, 70 % of the students would pass. Must be why the govt is trying to insist on uniform testing of students and not paying school districts that don't pass. Yea, it's probably the students fault, couldn't be the teachers. > Students with only 40% passed???? A Physics professor that I once had claimed that if someone got 100% on one of his tests, he had failed in testing them on everything that they knew... He said that he made his tests hard / lengthy so that he could be sure that that would not be the case... He would fit the grades to a bell curve at the end of the semester, but it was rather disconcerting knowing that at the end if he didn't, you would fail the course... > > Students with only 40% passed???? > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > end of the semester, but it was rather disconcerting knowing that at the end > if he didn't, you would fail the course... I had a physics prof who said that if you were happy with your grade at the end of the semester you didn't have to take the final exam but could instead accept whatever grade you happened to have before the exam. That same prof also said that if you took the final exam (it was cumulative) and scored higher than your grade in the class, he would give you your exam grade as your class grade becuase you had demonstrated that you understood the material he had covered. He also graded on a curve. The first test we took in his class, I scored a 99. The next closest score to mine was a 78 and the average score was a 34. I knew I had an A in the class after that one test. > He would fit the grades to a bell curve at the end of the semester, > He also graded on a curve. Neither of your professors know what they were doing. When they made up a test, they should know what grade would be an A, B, etc. Enrollment in a class is selected by the students. Why should a professor who knows what he's doing do such a DUMB thing as grading on a curve -- that's the most commonly abused grading method in education, for no justifiable reason whatsoever -- unless there is a contract when a student enrolls in the school that there are quotas for each grade (of course there's none). Why should a professor give anyone an A if the class happens (by chance) to be a bunch of dumb and lazy students none of whom can meet the standard for an A or B for the course? Then they should get Cs, Ds, and Fs. Conversely, why should a professor penalize a class of hard working geniuses who happen (by chance) to be enrolled in the same class, and ALL of them meet the standard for a grade of A? Then they should ALL get grades of As, Collectively, these grades will even out over a period of time over tens of thousands of students and they would naturally tend to have a "normal" or Gaussian shape, where the bulk of the grades will be in the middle and thins out on both ends, which can be explained by the Central Limit Theorem. Statistically speaking, there is absolutely no justification for anyone to think that a randomly selected small group of students should perform in accordance with the distribution of some curve; or worse, assign grades in a small class by a "curve". -- Bob. > Neither of your professors know what they were doing. Awh, 'ell Reefy, I never *claimed* they knew what they were doing... <grin> It's not like you can tell a tenured full professor that he's doing it wrong, right? The end result is just try to survive the course and see if you can make up the GPA in some other course... >> "Michael Wolf" wrote in message >news:Xns974517BBDCBB0mwolf@195.130.132.70... [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] >the average score was a 34. I knew I had an A in the class after that one >test. Rat bastard!!! :-) Signaturedillon 666 permissions of the beast > >> "Michael Wolf" wrote in message > >news:Xns974517BBDCBB0mwolf@195.130.132.70... [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > Rat bastard!!! :-) Interestingly, the average (mean) score rose considerably on the remaining tests and, as far as I could tell, the tests were actually more difficult even though the material was easier. Of course, that may have been because I was already assured of my grade and didn't put as much effort into the class after that point. I figured I could use the extra time to pursue more important goals... namely women (or, more specifically, a woman). :-) > "Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote in >> [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Students with only 40% passed???? Makes me wonder, too. I still remember the uproar of medicine students at the C.A.U. medical in the town of Kiel, when they failed students with results below 50%. Not that the treshold was new. Only this time the tests severeness was met mit a sufficient number to cause grief to some. What these students were unaware of, however, was the fact that a flunk ratio of, say 30%, is nothing unfamiliar, and as well tolerated, with students of engineering; while these are accustomed to passing tresholds of 60 % for a D grade. Matthias > > "Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote in > >> [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Makes me wonder, too. Well, you folks in this group has an attention span of about 3 lines, and that's why the cited paragraph was INCORRECTLY interpreted by EVERYONE who commented on it, because it was cited out of context. The points that were missed were that: 1. Hardly anyone failed the same course in other sections taught by those who sold their souls to the Devil, while out of a typical class of mine of size 40, over 50% flunked because those 20 who had dropped betore the end of the exam would have gotten F's, and several of those who stayed to the end did get F's. 2. The exams test comprehension (details in one of the threads I cited, e.g, open book, open notes, nothing to memorize) and I warned the students on Day 1 not to let the 75% for an A or the 40% for passing give them the impression that nearly everyone would get A's as in the other classes. That's why only 2 or 3 out of 40 got A's, and they had to EARN it. The Athletic Department used to send their students on academic probation to my classes because they drew the wrong inference about the 40% for passing. They had to be EARNED too. To the best of my recollection, none of the All American athletes sent to my classes ever passed! They got the idea, and hadn't sent any student to my classes the past 20 years. Why should they? They learned what the classes were who had the most "popular" and "best rated" teachers who never flunk anyone and even "tree stumps" got A's, while students complained bitterly about my "poor teaching" because I held the line on standards which they didn't meet, and got the low grades of failing grades they DESERVED. THAT's the rat race I chose to abandon. I could hold the line on standards because I was already a tenured FULL professor in 1977, in part because of my excellence in teaching! The easiest thing anyone can do is to hand out A's indiscriminantly. I am one of those few who held onto our PRINCIPLE of upholding the standards of college education, in spite of the unjustified and unwarranted complained by those "tree stumps" who disguised themselve as college students. Many professors whose employment status, promotion, and salary all depend on the abomination of "student rating" which many (but not all) students used to "blackmail" the professors into giving unearned and undeserved high grades, in exchange for their POOR teaching and EASY grading! THAT's what I meant by "they sold their souls to the Devil". My soul was, and is, not for sale at ANY price. End of this mini lecture and Sunday Sermon. You have to read the threads I referenced in sci.stat.math for many of details relative to the points stated here. -- Bob. > I still remember the uproar of medicine students at the > C.A.U. medical in the town of Kiel, when they failed [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > Matthias Matthias Voss <spammat.voss@gmx.de> wrote in news:dpqoh1$d39$03$1@news.t- online.com: >> "Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote in >>> [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > > Matthias With us it was simple: you had to have at least 55% in general and at least 50% for every single course. WHen you had more than 60% you didn't have to do a 2nd term for that course if you didn't pass in general. SignatureMichael Wolf ----- Cthulhu For President. Why settle for the lesser evil? remove stopspam to reply It all averaged out > >> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! > > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > Students with only 40% passed???? > Did anyone have a grade point LESS than 4.0? > > This is a serious comment, not to mean that it applies to Dillon. > In today's grade-inflation and make-everyone-feel-good > environment, every student expects to get an A in every course. > Whether they should have passed or flunked is beside the point. Might be *these days*, but it sure as 'ell wasn't like that back when I was working on my degrees... I have to admit though, I was happier getting a 'D' in Statistics than I had ever been when I had a 4.0 over 4 or 5 CS courses in other semesters... The 'D' was passing and I could therefore *graduate*... I had dropped that damn course at least 2 or 3 times by that point... I suspect that the professor took pity on my and 'gave' me the 'D' just so he wouldn't have to see me there again... <grin> > I graded the students on their comprehension of the > course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A > and 40% a passing D. It wasn't that way when I was in school... Basically a standard 10 pt grading scale -- 90-100=A, 80-89=B, 70-79=C, 60-69=D, 59 and below = F... Now, there was one Physics professor who would fit the class scores to a bell curve for your final grade... It kind of sucked coming to the last day that you could drop the course, having a 40 average, and it being in the upper 10% of all the students... You didn't know if you should drop the course or take your chances with him mapping the grades to the bell curve... > May be the Dean had a few words with those professors > who had put you in the unthinkable state of an "academic > probation". The professors learned to work around > whatever crap you had produced and put you in your > "comfort zone", by assigning the automatic "A"! Nawh, I never had a problem with CS course, it was just the Statistics that got me... The professor who usually taught that course taught it at a significantly more advanced level than the other professors who infrequently taught it... When the other professors taught it, there was a significantly higher enrollment in the course... For some reason, I had a lot more difficulty grasping Statistics than I did Calculus... I'm not saying that Calculus was *easy*, but at least I could manage a 'B' in it without having to consider dropping the course... As it has turned out, I've used neither Calculus nor Statistics for any of the systems that I've designed over the years... I think that perhaps they were just in the curriculum to weed out the students who should have been MIS instead of CS majors... >> > In other words 4.0 Four point oh!!!! > >Did anyone have a grade point LESS than 4.0? ACC makes class statistics available to all students. A&P started with 25 and finished with 17. The average drop rate was 40%, so we were above average. There were 3 As, 6 Bs and 8 Cs, no Ds or Fs, they all figured things out much earlier. The class average was a 78 something. Philosphy started with 24 and finished with 12. One A, 9 Bs and 2 Cs. Average for the class was an 83. Psych was a hard one to make a weak grade in. She gave all sorts of easy points, but some people totally screwed up. Turn in 6 questions on three chapters for the test and get a 100. Turn them in 3 days late and get a 75. So the average was around an 80 for each of the four assignments. 28 started, 23 finished. Two As, 12 Bs, 7 Cs, 1 D. Speech started 26, finished 18. 2 As, 11 Bs, 4 Cs and 1 F. College is a lot harder than I remember. I consistently put in 40 to 50 hours outside of class. I watched almost no TV and, in a most telling measure, I had 3 beers all semester, two of them on Thanksgiving. When an episode of NCIS talked about a bullet stopping in the medial adductor longus, I knew where it was and the damage it had done along the way. This sh.t actually stuck. >This is a serious comment, not to mean that it applies to Dillon. >In today's grade-inflation and make-everyone-feel-good >environment, every student expects to get an A in every course. >Whether they should have passed or flunked is beside the point. An interesting comment. Every one of my courses was taught by a full or associate prof. No grad students in a two year college. I've heard that courses like English and some basic Math were push overs, but I didn't see that in the levels I took. >I had quit the rat race 5 years ago when most of the professors >and administrators sold their souls to the Devil to appease the >students. I graded the students on their comprehension of the >course material taught. 75% was a guaranteed A and 40% a >passing D. My psych prof normalized the grads. This didn't necessarily mean getting a boost, as she also took grades down when the As were out of the norm. Not that it ever affected me. I needed a 69 in the final for that course to get an A. So I got a 94. In A&P we dropped the lowest exam and practical. I dropped an 86, which was the high grade for that exam. >In a typical class of size 40 for an undergrad course, usually >20 or more had dropped before the course was finished, and >many of those classes had only 2 or 3 A's, and several F's >among those who had NOT dropped. Only an idiot should get an F in a well taught class. If you can't figure it out by the drop date ... ACC has a policy where a professor can drop any student whose grades at mid term are insufficient to make a D at the end of the semester. HINT HINT. >That was AFTER I had watered down the course (which I had >taught for 25 years) to such a low level that any further erosion [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >Every semester students would line up at the Department >Chairs office complaining about my teaching -- to no avail. When I was in grad school I was offered $100 for a D. A D!!!!! The worst part of it was, he wasn't close enough to a D to make it worth $100. He also made the mistake of saying it in front of my office mate. So instead of flunking him I had to report him to the dept head, who reported him to the dean, who reported him to the academic VP. All this took 3 hours. Immigration was notified of his change of status before 5 and I was told deportation proceedings started the next moring. >But the saddest consequence of this erosion of learning hand- >in-hand with grade inflation is that I have found (in the [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >you'll see why. Below were some of the threads I initiated: > Signaturedillon 666 permissions of the beast |
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