Chris Olsen wrote:
> First of all, I have no clue how one would define grading on the curve.
> ...
> My preferred method is to construct tests & quizzes in a way that gives
> an approximately normal distribution, weight their z-scores, and sum
> to a result.
Sounds as though you have a pretty good grasp of it.
Before I quit trying to teach Math/Stats to unprepared/untalented
studentites, and got a so-called "real" job, I used score-clustering to
assign grades. My class sizes were large enough and heterogeneous enough
to result in three to five clusters, and there was no doubt that the few
top students [sometimes only one] earned an "A", so I never faced the
task of deciding whether everyone would get a "C" or lower, but I was
*much* more willing to do that than to do what so many of my colleagues
did: set arbitrary grade break-points, and then subsequently fudge
student performances by discarding low test scores, or by concocting low
ad_hoc weightings for them.
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