Final grade report

[bensoltoff]

Below is a summary of the course grades for the term. If you have any questions, please contact me directly. It's been a pleasure teaching all of you this quarter. Have a great winter break and get excited for @rickecon to teach you all about computational modeling next quarter. I look forward to seeing you all again in the spring for Perspectives on Computational Research.

Letter grade breakpoints

Letter grade	Numeric range
A	93 - 100
A-	90 - 92.99
B+	87 - 89.99
B	84 - 86.99
B- or below	0 - 83.9

These cutoffs were determined based on a standard 10-point scale for letter grades (e.g. 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B, 70-79 is a C). After reviewing the overall distribution of final scores for the class, I determined there was no need for a curve this term. 56.8% earned a straight A, while 79.5% of students earned an A or A-. Final scores are not rounded, nor will I consider doing so. Unfortunately this always means at least a handful of students fall just short of the cutoff for the next higher letter grade. However if I were to bump those scores up I would cause future researchers who may wish to analyze your grades using a regression discontinuity design to fall victim to a violation of the "as good as random" assumption.

Distribution of overall grades

• Mean: 91.3
• Median: 93.4
• Standard deviation: 9.41

Individual assignments

Assignment	Mean	Median	Std. Dev.	Min	Max
Observational data	8.53	8.50	0.891	7.0	10
Survey	8.21	8.50	1.546	0.0	10
Experiment	8.48	9.00	1.691	0.0	10
Simulation	9.49	10.00	1.562	0.0	10
Mass collaboration	9.78	10.00	0.719	6.0	10
Ethics	9.57	9.75	0.637	6.5	10
EDA	9.20	9.50	1.544	0.0	10
Unsupervised learning	9.27	9.50	1.548	0.0	10
Final exam	18.78	19.38	1.653	11.5	20