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Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

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674 points peterkshultz | 1 comments | 19 Oct 25 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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joshvm ◴[19 Oct 25 17:50 UTC] No.45636243[source]▶
One really important factor is the grading curve, if used. At my university, I think the goal was to give the average student 60%, or a mid 2.1) with some formula for test score adjustment to compensate for particularly tough papers. The idea is that your score ends up representing your ability with respect to the cohort and the specific tests that you were given.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/current/teach/general/...

There were several courses that were considered easy, and as a consequence were well attended. You had to do significantly better in those classes to get a high grade, versus a low-attendance hard course where 50% in the test was curved up to 75%.

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1. jll29 ◴[20 Oct 25 03:21 UTC] No.45639950[source]▶
> One really important factor is the grading curve, if used.

I never use it to grade, because it is empirically unfair.

The further you move in the educational system, the less people's aptitute matches a Gaussian or "normal" distribution.

(I also often fought a lot with management and HR when I was a manager in industry, as my team was hardly statistically normal (100% Ph.D.s from top places) imposing a Gaussian for bonus payments on a strongly left-skewed distribution is unfair. Microsoft introduced this and got into legal trouble, and many companies followed late and didn't realize the legal trouble part.)