Page Comparison

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This is an essential strategy in order to cleanly project grades throughout the quarter/semester/trimester, so the instructor can see how well his or her students are doing based on the items that have been graded, even before all the scores are in.

Calculating Category Grade w/ Drop Lowest

When calculating a category score with the number of drop lowest items > 0, it is necessary to first calculate the re-weighted scores for all items for that student based on which items are graded and not excused, then to remove the lowest values and recalculate the weights again.

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W = sum of all included item weights within a category excluding extra credit items (the instructor's "best case" weights)
r = 1 / W
p = percentage score for a given item (points earned / points possible)
x = p * r (scaled score for a given item)
Z = sum of all the student's scaled scores for a given r

1. Sum the student's scaled scores (x0, x1 . . . xN)
2. To determine the drop lowest order, sort the scaled scores
3. If a drop lowest number is defined, drop that many items from the calculation
4. Recalculate W based on the items that are still included
5. Recalculate r based on the new W
6. Recalculate Z based on the new r

So, if we were to calculate the "Category 1" grade for Joe, we first need to examine the desired category weights for each item, as in the table below:

We can then look at Joe's actual percentage scores for each item and calculate W, r, x0..XN, and Z

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Y = sum of all included category weights within a gradebook (the instructor's "best case" weights)
q = 1 / Y
Zf = (as above) the final sum of scaled scores for the category (this is the 'category score')
y = Zf * q
G = sum of all y's above (y0, y1 . . . yN)