Midterm 1 Results - 2007

The first midterm has been graded and your GSI's will give you your individual results next time you meet with them. Please don't e-mail me - I don't have the individual results, just the overall summary.

However some of you may be interested in this, especially when you have your own grade.

Overall there were 259 students, the mean was 80% and the median was 84%. This difference is typical for skewed distributions and is why the median is a better descriptor. If you got 84% (the median) then half the class scored more than you and half the class scored less.

Overall 37% of the class scored in the A range (>90%), 25% in the B range (>80%), 18% in the C range and 10% each in the D and F range.

These results are similar to previous years (see link below for last years results) with one small exception - a much higher number of students than usual got a perfect score. This year an impressive 12 students got 100% on this midterm. Well done.

As usual I have looked at the answer distribution for all the questions to check for problems.

Lowest % correct was 57% for Q27 (polydactyly in cats - despite the word DOMINANT being in bold capitals, a significant number of people provided the allele frequency that would have been correct if it was a recessive trait) and 50% for Q 37 (the calculation on the seed discarding plant breeder that was meant to be a fairly difficult question).

Highest % correct was 98% (one question).
I have looked closely at all the questions where either less than two thirds of you got the correct answer (6 questions) or more than 20% of you picked a particular incorrect answer (4 questions) and don't see any problems.

Section means were similar and no section was more than 4% away from the overall mean of 80%.

This time last year: Midterm 1 Results and Web Sight