STAT 401E  Gradespage

How grades are calculated:

Your labs (i.e., homework) count for 25%, and the final exam counts for 35% of your grade.  The other 40% of your grade will depend upon your performance on two exams, given during lab periods on September 29th and November 3rd.  Grades for the course will be given with +'s and -'s, not in whole letter grades.

Exams will be closed book.  During the first exam you may have one 8½"x 11" sheet of paper with formulas written on it; during the second exam you may have two such sheets; during the final you may have three.

In addition to your formula sheets, be sure to have the following:

pencils, eraser, and (fully charged) calculator

the formula sheet distributed by the instructor in class

the "Checklist for Statistics Problems" provided by your instrutor

the 10 pages of tables (Tables A through E) provided by your instrutor

a bilingual dictionary (for students whose native language is not English)

special accommodations for handicapped students (arranged on an ad hoc basis)

Like all courses involving mathematics, this course's material is cumulative.  Accordingly, it is essential that we all work together to ensure that everyone masters course material as the course progresses.  For this reason, you are encouraged to form study groups with your peers, and to compare and discuss your answers to lab problems prior to handing them in on their due dates.  (A caveat:  Please be warned not to use your study group for obtaining answers to lab problems.  Be sure to have puzzled out your answer before comparing it with your peers' answers.  If you do not do this, your exam grades will suffer when you are required to solve problems on your own.)

Nonetheless, you will have some help from others even during exams.  This is because exams will be taken twice during lab periods—once individually and once in groups of 3 or 4 of your classmates (assigned by your instructor).  The purpose here is to ensure that everyone leaves the exam period with a better understanding of the tested material than they had when they took the exam individually.  To make this double-testing method work, I must ask that all students make room in their schedules for an extra hour (or two?) to take exams on the scheduled dates.  Some students are slower than others in taking exams, and I prefer not to artificially force anyone to stop taking the exam individually in order to give the person's group enough time to jointly work on it. Grades on exams are the average of individual and group scores.  (And yes, a group score can lower your grade, so be persuasive if you believe your solution to an exam problem is correct.)  The "real world" is a place in which research is done without such severe time constraints; it is also a place where one must be able to persuasively communicate what one knows.  Such are the lessons of cooperative learning.