Physics 114 - Spring 2006 - University of Rochester

General Physics II- Elec. and Mag. and Modern

Best numerical average (BNA) distribution

This is the final distribution that was used for setting letter grades. For each student I calculated your grade five ways as specified in the syllabus. The BNA represents the highest of those five final numbers. If you did poorly on a particular exam, this calculation selects the grade calculation that drops that particular exam. The exam grades that were used in the BNA calculations were the normalized exam grades. The normalized exam grade was determined by multiplying your exam grade by the ratio (70)/(mean of exam) for that particular exam. For example, the mean grade for the final exam was 64. So, in the BNA calculation, the final exam grade that was used was (your FE grade)*(70)/(64). The normalization was used to approximately remove exam-to-exam fluctuations in difficulty.

The grade boundaries before any adjustment due to workshop attendance are the following:
> 91 A

> 88 A-

> 84 B+

> 77 B

> 73 B-

> 70 C+

> 63 C

If you attended 7 or more workshops and your BNA is within one point of a boundary, I will give you the higher letter grade. For example, if your BNA is 91 and you attended more than 6 workshops, you would get an A. If you attended 6 or fewer workshops, you would get the A-.

All grade decisions are made with numbers rounded to the nearest integer as done by my version of Microsoft Excel.