Thursday, August 17, 2006

Midterm 3 etc.

Here are the results of the third midterm. Please don't e-mail me for your individual scores, I don't have them!

The overall mean was 81% and the median was 82%.

Nobody managed to get all fifty questions correct this time but four students, in three different sections, got all but one question correct.

Section means were very similar and, yet again, no section mean was more then 3% away from the overall mean of 82%

The histogram of scores is above and the breakdown by grade is below.

A (ie >=90%) - 31%
B - 37%
C - 18%
D - 8%
F - 6%

I have looked closely at all the questions where either less than two thirds of you got the correct answer (I only have this data by section, but it looks like maybe 4 questions) or more than 20% of you picked a particular incorrect answer (again, maybe 4 questions) and don't see any serious problems.

Well it's been fun. I hope some of you have enjoyed reading the blog. Google's blogger is certainly convenient but I have to say it has the most bizarre spell checker. It's not surprising it doesn't have technical terms in its database but it tries to replace them with amusingly inappropriate terms. Here's a couple I particularly enjoyed:

one of a whole family of defoliants used during the Vietnam war.
is much improved as:
one of a whole family of diplomats used during the Vietnam war.

and humongous fungus.
is alliterative but, again, is much improved as
unionized fungus

John

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3 Comments:

At 8:31 PM, Blogger Biggestsmall said...

Thanks for doing the blog. It was fun to read and very interesting.

 
At 10:11 PM, Blogger Admin said...

Thank you Dr. Latto for everything. You've made the class very enjoyable, and it is definitely one of the best classes I've taken. Not only did I learn about biology, I've also learned many interesting facts, and the class really made me want to take more biology courses. I hope this blog, as well as your other websites, will stay up so that whenever we want to revisit this class, we can. I'm definitely saving a copy of all your lectures for my future reference. Thank you!

Michael

 
At 10:34 PM, Blogger John Latto said...

Thanks. I'm not sure what I'll do with the blog when I'm not teaching Bio1b but I won't delete it. Wiki1B will stay up too - I'll probably get it added to the main bio1b site since it will be useful to bio1b students in the regular semester too.

 

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