Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why I Hate Math

I had a physics prof like that in junior college. I took three classes with that prof and was lucky enough to suffer all three with a genius that blew the curve on every test. He'd score in the 90's and the next highest grade was in the 70's, maybe. In the last class, the genius begged to not take the final, but the prof wasn't having it. The kid (graduated HS a couple years early) answered one or two questions to get the few points he needed overall for his A and walked out. It was the only test he didn't ace and it was the most upset I'd ever seen that prof.

Had a differential equations teacher that claimed she wouldn't round up at the end of the semester, but if you were happy with your grade you weren't required to take the final. Somehow, I scored a 95 on my final test. She graded it in front of me and calculated my grade to be a 69.something. She then says, "that's close enough to a C for me, do you want to take the final?" No, and thank you.

You are correct. Trying to "outsmart" generally intelligent students is just being an asspole, not a good instructor.

Too bad you get an "F" for getting the Homework wrong...

One the subject of curves:

I took an undergrad sociology class where we were informed grading would strictly adhere to the classic Bell curve. Prof must have recently been schooled by a stats guru and become a committed follower. That being, there would be a definitive number of A's, B's, most of us would get C's, and yes for sure, some D's and F's on the low end. With no front-end knowledge of how tests might shake out, a 90% could potentially be an A or just as easily an F if everyone did well. No one felt comfortable, and the dropout rate picked substantially up near the end. With fewer students, grade slots were getting pretty narrow. I happily scored a B and did not go in to see what my actual numerical value was. I just wanted out.

A little off subject: But I had several classes where seniors were excused from final exams due to graduation schedules. I always thought that was unfair, as they should have the same opportunity to lower their grade that I did.

I never graded that way.

Suppose I taught differential equations two semesters in a row, and in one semester the class overall was filled with weaker students. If I taught and tested the same both semesters, the pure bell curve approach could lead to some B students from the weaker class actually having achieved less learning and mastery than C students from the stronger class.

I guess that my magic glasses let me down on seeing the invisible parentheses.

I was an adjunct for a few years teaching engineering. This was one of my favorites:

I knew a guy in the USARMY that could pick up a book, flip through the pages for a few minutes and tell you what the entire book was all about.

He must have been a speed reader. A professor told me JFK read 8 newspapers every day. I think he could read about 800 words per minute. And that's not even super fast. He showed us how speed reading works. It helped me a lot.