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Thursday, January 7, 2010

Number Crunching Time

409 divided by 582 is .7027... yadda yadda yadda.
Now add 129.4 points to 409. That makes 538.4.
Divide 538.4 by 582 and you get .9250... yadda yadda yadda.

So, what's up with the nunbers Einstein? Well, let's take a look at what they represent, shall we class?

409 is the total amount of points awarded to Todd Martin for his Media Writing class last semester. The total points possible for that class is 582. Thus, his numerical grade was, you guessed it, 70.3%.

Upon further inspection of Blackboard's recordings of said grades, Todd Martin found that eight assignments were not recorded, so the points remained at zero. Of these eight assignments, 35 of those points were basically attendance points, and would have been awarded full credit. The other one hundred points were the four unrecorded lab assignments. Assuming Todd Martin made his average points on these 25 point assignments each (the average being 23.6 based on the other 7 lab grads), that would total 94.4 points total. Add the 35 given points, and that represents the 129.4, which would then bring Todd Martin's total earned points up to 538.4. What then, would be the difference if the faculty had not overlooked these assignments?

The answer is 22.2% total of the numerical grade. Instead of a 70% (C-), Todd Martin would have scored 92.5% (A-), since the class is not curved.

That's the difference between applying to the Communications program this semester and applying in September. That's the difference between at least two more semesters of tuition.

And I know what you're thinking now, "Todd, are you sure you did these assignments?" The answer is unequivocally YES!! I didn't miss any of these classes at all last semester, and I turned in every lab assignment in lab! Maybe, just maybe, I didn't turn in the active voice worksheet after I did it, but that's only 15 points. If every 5.82 points is 1% of the grade, that would have dropped me from the assumed 92% to 89%... a B+.

Now you're thinking, "Well, it's your responsibility to check your grades and alert the professor to anything missing." And you would be right to think so. Despite him having announced several times that he was aware that there were missing grades on blackboard and he was taking care of it, I still dropped the ball when I neglected to check my grades every day before Christmas and complain to him every day that they still were'nt there.

Perhaps now you see why I want to do my angry dance to class every day!

Of course, I did make a B- in Comms 101 two semesters ago. They won't even look at any application that has grades less than a B in that class, so I have to retake it anyways. So I won't apply til September anyways. So what in TARNATIONS am I making a case for, right?? RiGHT?
BUTTERFRICKLE!

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