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Pavol Hell MACM 101 Grading

lundymaphone
edited October 2013 in General
Hi, I am taking MACM 101 with Pavol Hell this semester. I had a few questions about his grading policy.

1) I feel only somewhat confident about the midterm. In the course outline it states

"This happens rarely, but if your final exam grade is better than the average as calculated above [there is a grading policy with percentage weights for assignments and exams], the final exam grade will prevail". 

I have two questions about this:

A) How difficult are his midterms/finals, as it stands now I am hoping to hit a really good final exam and do well in the course.

B) In the past, I had a prof with a similar policy. Despite that policy, he refused to abide by it, said (on the last week of classes), that it was a "typo" (we think he changed his mind). So don't laugh, but have any of you ever had Pavol "change his mind" about grade weighting (NOT a question about how he scales/curves)? Are there any caveats to that policy? Ie you miss an assignment, midterm, etc, he feels you are lazy and reduces your grade independent of the above policy?


2) What is Pavol's general philosophy on curving/scaling?


PS I will ask him, but he doesn't answer questions via email and I wont see him until the day of the midterm, these questions also seem like the kind of questions that will tick him off.

Comments

  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    Sounds to me like this class is Hell.
  • 112233
    Don't rely on your final mark, he's not lying when he says it rarely happens. Do not rely on your final mark. Don't. If you sucked at your midterm, how can you expect to do better on your final. There are many many classes that use this rule, so I don't think he'll change his mind. And so many classes use this rule because it happens so rarely. The class isn't that hard. Study up, and do tons of practice problems.
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    I think that rule applied to me once and really saved my ass and bumped be up to an A because the mid-term was marked by a stupid kind of hardass but just really nerdy keener TA and liked to be harsh and did not care about students' grades but the final was marked by the other TA who was normal so yeah. From a C+ mid-term to an A final. Not for this class though, it was ECON.
  • Lucid
    Pavol Hell is really great for hard courses.  I had him for CMPT 307, which is one of the harder courses in comp sci.  He tried to make it easy, but it was still extremely hard.  Class average for final was 31%! lol.  But as long as everyone fails together, it's all good.  
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    edited October 2013
    Is this what society is coming to... everyone failing the required knowledge and skills of a class yet ending up passing regardless because solely of the fact that everyone failed. What happens when they get into the real world and they fail in the career and cause a nuclear meltdown or something because it was just "too hard"? Not to sound hard-ass, but I'm really actually just curious about the pros of this grading philosophy...

    With that said, I had a friend once who sent out a mass e-mail to everyone in a class to purposely fail so the test would be omitted. That person got in shit for attempting, but really funny tho lol
  • lundymaphone
    edited October 2013
    @BeAnBeAn

    Um...if my final exam (which tests the cumulative skills learned in the course) supersedes my overall mark*, doesn't that sort of prove that I did learn all of the required material? Just using the weights, if someone got 100% on the midterm, and 70% on the final, they would do better then someone with a 0% on the midterm and an 85% on the final. Now, without any other information, who do you assume knows more about the subject? The person with 70% on the final or 85%? Everyone has bad tests, which is why you don't put everything into one test. That said, you don't "fluke" a good mark (ie going from fail to B/A) on something like a math or MACM test, so if you do show well there, it shows you know what you are doing. 


    Your analogy is flawed because a class is the process of learning about/how to do something, not about actually managing/implementing it. In your nuclear meltdown case, the only way that is comparable for my situation is if they threw me into a nuclear power plant with absolutely no training/knowledge of physics. The end result of the course is all that is important. If I tested a professional athlete on their skills at various ages, then averaged their score, their average score would be quite low (given they spent most of their pre-20's life sucking at their sport). But that doesn't matter, all that matters is that they got good in an appropriate amount of time (ie before their body aged beyond what training could make up for).  

    Edit: *Assuming I did better on the final
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    I still genuinely don't quite understand the advantages of that though. And your analogy is also flawed too because the majority of pro-athletes are one of the best in their pre-20's and actually start at a very very young age. Most of them train their entire life from someone before them who is in the sport. I can name like 10 NBA players off the top of my head in the most recent draft picks. But I guess you can sort of see scaling at play here because they became pro-athletes because they were above average compared to everyone else that made them stand out. But that doesn't mean they're necessarily good though. Which is where a set grade/skill scale sets in to sift out the actual elite players and not just the ones comparably good.
  • lundymaphone
    edited October 2013
    @BeAnBeAn. The advantage is that if you do well at the end of the course, but not at the beginning, you can still get out with a representative grade, as the grade is supposed to represent the knowledge you have gained. If you do well on the final, you presumably do know the subject well. 


    My analogy is accurate, as I was alluding to the importance of the end result, rather then the process, although of course doing better throughout the process increases your odds. If a 12 year old puts on skates and manages to lead the OHL, no one is going to care that he started several years later then most kids, or that he took several more years to catch up, then surpass, his peers. 


    If you agree with the premise that the course is support to teach you a skill or/and body of knowledge, and you agree that tests are an indicator of said knowledge/skills, then it makes sense. If I can show that my cumulative knowledge of the subject was sound, then the fact that I did poorly before is unimportant, as now, at the end of the course, I have better understanding of the subject matter. And if my grade is supposed to indicate my competency, then why should it indicate my competency at the end of my course, rather then a weighted average taken at various random points throughout the course? If you are a software engineer, and you are asked if you can program in c++, they wouldn't care that 5 years ago you could barely use if statements, all they care about is your competency at that point in time. The difference being that in school you have a set period of time (3.5 months), whereas in these working life examples the time-scale has to adapt to the person's career.

     Prof's that use the final exam rule stated in this topic probably believe that the only thing that matters is that the student has a grade that represents their knowledge of the subject as of leaving the course. It is the basic reason why final exams/papers are weighted so heavily, almost universally so. 


    Edit: And other then a (separate) inquiry in my original post, I have said nothing about scaling/curving, in fact in my original post I made a specific point to avoid people confusing the two questions as being related.
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    Hahahahahaha okay all of that was totally unnecessary. because..... I just realized this thread is about final exam mark taking over etc. etc. Either I mixed this up with the other thread about scale/curve or I just thought this one was talking about it and I'm retarded. But it's almost 3am and my eyes are half open so that's justified. But ya final exam mark (if exam is cumulative) replacing original grade is good. Unless there are other major components like projects/participation/papers etc. Buttttt yeah, if you read my question, how did you not know I was talking about curve and not the final exam mark thing? I didn't explicitly say it but it makes a lot more sense if you read it again and think about the curve. Not sure how that happened but yeah that's what I'm asking about.
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    Ohhh ok ok I see what happened here. So I was on the other thread about how curve works then I come to this one and read Lucid's comment and I guess made me think this is the thread about curving and that's how it became this huge clusterfuck. Anyway, sleep deprived. peace out mofos.
  • lundymaphone
    @BeAnBeAn Well...in my first reply I explicitly I restated the point about final exams superseding the final mark, and you continued, so I assumed my assumption (that you were specifically talking about curves/scaling) was incorrect...so I assumed you were an idiot and needed it spelled out for you in needless detail. It is actually good to know that you are simply sleep deprived and not a useless person...I should go to bed as well.
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    LMAO!! I actually loled. U mad bro? U seem mad. Would you like to perhaps express your frustrations on another essay or perhaps over coffee? I don't drink coffee.
  • lundymaphone
    @lakerfanatic well...I did say pre-twenties...I said nothing of what they were like when they were 25, other then implying that they were better then when they were 18. Regardless, the specific age when NBA players reach there prime doesn't really matter for the purpose of my example. 

    @BeAnBeAn no...I was not mad, I actually thought you were slightly ticked, given how negatively you spoke of (what we now know to be) the grading curve system. I was in fact happy when I discovered that you were commenting on the wrong topic, as beforehand your behaviour was confusing. I will admit though, there is something about the words "U" and bro that give me immediate negative feelings (or some other hippy shit). Don't worry, I can write/type very quickly, I only spend about 2-3 minutes a post. 
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    Yes because I am clearly completely against the curve even though I was asking for opinions on the pros and advantages of it and explicitly stated my misunderstanding of it. And I would be clearly "ticked" if I spoke negatively about something like that.

    Wow you get really defensive quickly and are a swiftly butthurt person. If you look back at my comments you'll realize you got butthurt prettttyy fast for no reason. That negative feeling you speak of is butthurt. Thank you for admitting your hipster origins though. It all makes sense now. Your 6 posts speak a lot. You may proceed, have fun!
  • BeAnBeAnBeAnBeAn
    @lakerfanatic <3

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