/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11209831
There seems to be a common misunderstanding that when a prof says he's going to "curve the exam" that he's going to fit your grades to a bell curve or something. This is very rare because it essentially enforces a certain amount of failures. Universities want as few failures as possible. They certainly don't want a guaranteed constant amount of them.

"Grading on a curve", 95% of the time, means
>you guys fucked up my exam so bad I'm gonna get called into somebody's office if I submit these marks, so I'm going to bump everybody up by a scaling factor until they're acceptable

>>11209854
This. If your prof says they're grading in any sort of weird way, it means one of you (prof or students) fucked up and too many people failed.

This guy was right about the reason, too. The faculty doesn't like having high failure rates, and it's often more of a sign that the course is bad than that the students are dumb, which reflects poorly on the prof.

>>11209831
Usually a sign of incompetence and overly lax admissions standards.

>>11209831
Annoying when it doesn't apply to me.
In my Calc III class, the median was a C-, as was the average.
I learned that at the end of the semester the professor bumps everyone under a B+ a letter grade or whatever (D- to D, C+ to B-, B to B+). Well fuck him, because I have an A- (A- in this class is a 90-93.9), so I don't get any bump.

>>11209831
>upper div math foundations class
>over half the class fails
>I get a low C
>bumps me up to a B
On the other hand, prof made the exam extra hard and intentionally put stuff we hadn't learned. Also, hw was only 10% of the grade, so I got to half ass his obnoxious assignments and still do decently.

>>11210020
I'm >>11210010
HW was fucking 20% of the grade (accuracy). I finished with an average of am 83% in HW, meaning my maximum grade was around a 96. I only had 2-3 points for error before having an A-.

In my country grades are not curved, and it screwed up my PhD admissions in other countries. My GPA was around 3.35, while the best GPA in our department that year was 3.4.
Apart from that, it still feels more fair to me. If all students are retarded, no one should get a good grade.

>>11210029
>hw was 20%
considering calc is all about rote memorization and practicing hundreds of different problems and being able to do them all correctly and quickly, HW should have been worth more, and you should have done better on it.

Professors don't tell students that they curve in order to avoid those issues. I ended Calculus 3 assuming I was gonna have to retake it next semester, but my final grade was somehow a C.

>>11209979
>the faculty doesn't like having high failure rates
I wish that were true in my 3rd world shithole

>>11210061
That's because students who pass at your school are likely to become colleagues of the professors. I wouldn't want my students to have been taught their prerequisite classes by some flunkie. Or just any asshole in general. I bet the profs at your school grade by nepotism.

>>11209831
gachiBASS

is this thread secretly about boobs?

>>11209854
Maybe in burgerland.
Here grades are absolute and if you fail you can go cry to your mother and neither the professor nor does the university care.
Theres actually been cases of the head of department telling certain professors to fail more people.
Ive also been the only person to pass a class multiple times, and the tipical failure rate for a class in my degree is over 50%

In Italy grading curves is absolutely unheard of, feels like a cheat code for dumb students.

You'd have to pay me to date one of these autist gen z airheads

>>11209831
She looks super fucking annoying, uneducated, obnoxious, and stupid. Fucking brainlet.

>>11210934
>annoying, uneducated, obnoxious, and stupid
All doesn't matter when it comes to cumming on the tits.
(This is rhetoric to get my point across. In reality it actually helps if the girl you come on is stupid and annoying, i.e. hatefucking is satisfying)

>>11210371
epic

>>11209854
Yeah that's the case, although in some classes professors don't give a fuck what you get is what you get. If it becomes habitual that people regularly fail like atleast 70% then someone will look into it.

>>11210934
You know you'd really like to fuck the shit out of her.

>>11211046
Why?

>>11210934
>super fucking annoying, uneducated, obnoxious, and stupid
The perfect woman.

>>11209831
Look A is better than Look B.

pic related is an actual email from a University of Toronto professor to their students. I am not sure what the course is, but my friend who posted this is studying neuroscience.

In my opinion there is nothing more disgusting than an institution which deliberately undermines it's students efforts for the sake of maintaining a "prestigious" reputation. Such a blatant example of modern universities operating as a money making machine, prioritizing incoming students tuition fees rather than education. UofT in particular is a good example, it has a reputation of treating students (especially first years) very harshly in the hopes that they will drop out.

UofT has had three (reported) student suicides this past year.

>>11211623
>UofT has had three (reported) student suicides this past year.
canada is cold
and dark
why wouldn't you kill yourself

>>11211529
Definitely this.

Because this can happen.

>>11211529
The optimal strategy is to use cute Look A 95% of the time and use Look B 5% of the to remind people you have great assets.

>>11211066
> tipical

>>11211623
First year students are supposed to drop out

>>11211682
I've gotten emails like this before. Not my fault the professor makes a 3-question final with proofs that are ridoculously hard.

>>11211682
I wish administrators would back up professors and fail people if they fail, there should be a review of fairness done by other professors if necessary, but fuck this "everyones a winner" culture

My school is full of retards with a few genius autists sprinkled throughout so curved grades are always a benefit for me

>>11211682
What class was this for?

>>11210934
>She looks super fucking annoying, uneducated, obnoxious, and stupid. Fucking brainlet.
and yet she will have an easy life full of orbiters dying to please her . she will even have kids to make her feel that she is not a roastie.

>>11209854
I have had my grade lowered by curve.

>>11209831
I grade those curves a 8.

>>11211529
This. It's like Sandra D in grease.

>>11211682
absolute god that got 99%

>>11211623

yes, I heard UT professors are required to fail like 20% of first year students and 20% of second year students

>>11211623

also UofT courses has very little actual teaching, you have to learn everything on your own

>>11211682

what course is this?

>>11209831
>Do you feel like you shouldn't help your peers to learn since that would hinder your chances to get a higher grade?
This isn't how grading curves work
Also if you just get an A in the course regardless it doesn't matter what the curve is. Don't blame other people for your own failures

>>11209987
>lax admission standards
Maybe. But a professor has no control over this.
>incompetence
This exists independently of the decision to curve.

>>11212541
there's a few places where that is how curves work, law schools mostly.

>>11210043
>calc is about memorization
maybe for brainlet engineers

>>11211915
>>11212515
Calculus II.

>>11211748
It was fairly straightforward with no curveballs. They even got to keep note cards.

>>11211768
Yeah, I'm with you on this. It's stupid to inflate grades like this. These idiots who got a 30 on that Calculus II final are sitting beside me in Calculus III and having the same problems.

>>11211929
He should have gotten 100%

>>11210746
I don't understand how it's possible to never curve grades. Once the material becomes advanced enough it's tough to impossible to write good questions, at which point curves are pretty much mandatory. Especially courses which teach off monographs or papers.

>>11211946
Keep telling yourself that, gradelet

If you are in a good program everyone fails every test miserably because the professor knows you're all smart as fuck anyways and then just gives everyone A's. Welcome to grad school in math.

>>11209831
thicc khazar milkies

>>11209854
Lol we have one class per semester where a 50% failure rate is the norm. Profs usually dont give a shit but last year he did have to fit it to a curve. Had to change it to around 30% score being enough to pass or we would have had some 80% failures including me...

>>11212903
>Implying you did epsilon-delta proofs in calc 2
All freshman-sophomore level math is procedural, "useful-tool for many disciplines" math that requires no thinking and all memorizing. Even the best math programs require just the bare minimum critical thinking. But if you got into the best math programs you finished calc before graduating high school. There is literally no incentive for any educator to treat calc like anything other than what it actually is: a dumb slut of a technique that doesn't need to be loved or understood, just used.
Now, her younger sister, analysis, that's the one you want to settle down with and really care about.

>>11209831
The only time I like the concept of a curve was on my analysis exam. The prof fucked up and gave us an exam that was way too long for 50 minutes. His "curve" was to have us do problems we lost points on again and get 2/3 of credit for them. That seemed fair to me.

I think the whole concept of a curve in the US stems from the ridiculous letter grade scale you guys have. At least for me, the difference between an A and an A- (usually at 92%) is down to some stupid bullshit like making a dumb mistake on a final or missing an assignment, because it was your last one and started at 7:30pm. Exams (at least in my college) tend to be way simpler than homeworks precisely because they expect you to complete everything flawlessly. It shouldn't be that way, mistakes are normal, especially at such a stressful environment.

>curved grades

we don't have such thing, you pass the class or you don't, you learn enough or you just don't and need to re take the class

>>11209831
everyone that studies physics at the uni i'm at is fucking retarded, so the curve always helps me out. aside from the assigned problem sets I don't spend jack shit on studying (except the evening before exams) and still 4.0 almost everything

>>11209831
here in mexico we don't have a problem with grading curves, since no one uses them
now corruption on the other hand...

>>11212903
I mean calc 1-2 are but calc 3 and up isn't memorization.

I just got 92.88 class average so I hope I get rounded to 93 for an A. That being said the majority of the class is probably an A right now as it's a bit easy but I fucked up hardcore and skipped a page on the 1st exam (69%) whilst getting 95%+ on 2nd exam/final.

Always an outlier so when they curve, I end up become the 100% benchmark

>>11210934
>She looks super fucking annoying, uneducated, obnoxious, and stupid.
No way! She is cute, fun, and very expressive. But I understand your pain of longing and loss; I fell it, too.

>>11211682
>allowed to make up the midterm exam
>extra credit quiz
>100 tries (!!!) on each WebAssign problem
Ok, there were clearly red flags that something was going off the rails right from the get-go.

Other possible contributing abject disasters:
1. professor's ability to teach
2. textbook/author presenttion
3. demographics of the class.

But hey, we'll just curve the grades instead and let y'all pass.

>>11216252
>calc 3 and up isn't memorization
Everything up to and including second treatment of linear algebra is memorization. Half of Analysis is knowing/memorizing the definition. The first half of abstract algebra is 10% proof 90% memorization, and the second half is ad hoc techniques. Anything with the word "differential" in it is all memorization, except for the rare existence and uniqueness stuff and when you might have to use some calculus theorem in an easy proof. Combinatorics is literally just knowing how to count properly. All math that isn't at the forefront of current mathematical research is memorization.

>>11217027
autism

>>11210371
Why would you take a class multiple times if you're already passed it?
You're wasting your time/money anon

>>11209831
they kill performance