Spring 2024 - ECE 301 Signals and
Systems
Midterm exams and the related
policies
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Midterm
exam dates and time |
Format of the midterm exams |
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Midterm
exam score adjustment formulas |
What if I miss (or cannot attend) a midterm exam? |
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Please see the information in the very top of the course webpage. You can
also check the information from the official Purdue evening exam link: https://www.purdue.edu/registrar/pdf/exam/current_evening_exam_schedule.pdf
If there is any inconsistency between the course webpage and the Purdue’s
evening exam link, please use the information in the Purdue evening exam link
(the above link) as the most accurate/up-to-date information.
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Midterm exam
score adjustment formula
All the midterm exam scores will first go through an adjustment formula
and then the lowest adjusted score of
your midterm exams will be dropped. See
the exam-score-dropping policy below. The reason
why we apply an adjustment formula is to make sure all three midterms are
equally difficult/easy.
The rationale: If one exam is particularly hard, then the exam
score dropping policy will be unfair since most people will have to drop the
score of the hardest exam, rather than the one he/she performs the poorest. To
ensure fairness across the three exams, we thus apply an adjustment formula to
your exam scores first. Then we drop the one with the lowest adjusted score.
Because of this above reason, we will announce the exam score adjustment
formula after MT3 is graded.
Official exam score adjustment formulas:
o
MT1_adjusted = MT1_raw;
o
MT2_adjusted = MT2_raw+8;
o
MT3_adjusted = MT3_raw+14;
The lowest of the adjusted
scores will be dropped.
Example #1: if your raw scores are MT1_raw=88, MT2_raw=90, and MT3_raw=93, then
your adjusted scores are MT1_adjusted=88, MT2_adjusted=98, and MT3_adjusted=107.
Then MT1_adjusted score will be dropped. And the other two adjusted scores:
MT1_adjusted=98. and MT3_adjusted=107 will be used toward your final letter
grade.
Example #2: if your raw
scores are MT1_raw=56, MT2_raw=65, and MT3_raw=55, then your adjusted scores
are MT1_adjusted=56, MT2_adjusted=73, and MT3_adjusted=69. Then MT1_adjusted
score will be dropped. And the other two adjusted scores: MT2_adjusted=73. and
MT3_adjusted=69 will be used toward your final letter grade.
Rationale: Since MT3 was harder than the other two
exams (the median being 55.0), we add 14 points to everybody’s MT3 to bring its
average to a similar level as MT1 and MT3.
MT2 was also hard (the medium being 61) so we only add 8 points to MT2.
The midterm exam score drop policy will then be applied to the adjusted scores.
The format of the midterm
and final exams will 95% similar to the past exams before and including Spring
2022.
The exams of Spring 2023 may
be quite different to the exams in this semester since Spring 2023 was
co-taught with Prof. Brinton.
In this course, we
automatically drop the score of the lowest of the three exams. As a result, if
a student cannot attend a midterm exam, say due to unexpected medical reasons,
the score of that midterm exam will be dropped.
The other two exam scores will then be automatically used for the final
grade.
The policy of
“dropping the lowest midterm exam scores” is designed specifically to help
students with any official or unofficial reason who cannot attend the
exam. It is not designed to help improve
students’ midterm exam scores, even though it may appear to have this
unintended benefits.
For those of you who still have questions about the
rationale behind this policy, please continue reading the following examples.
Example 1: Student A attended and completed all three
midterm exams and got scores 75, 81, and 70.
Then his/her MT3 score will be dropped and the other two, 75 and 81 will
be used for his/her letter grade.
Example 2: Student B attended MT1 and MT3 but could not
attend MT2 due to medical emergencies. His/her midterm scores are 77, ---,
73. Then his/her MT2 score will be
dropped and the other two, 77 and 73 will be used for his/her letter grade.
Example 3: Student C did not have time to prepare for MT1 and
MT2 and received 65 and 59, respectively. He/she would thus like to study extra
hard for MT3. His/her plan
was that by getting a good grade for MT3, he/she can drop the lowest MT2
score. By studying extra hard, he/she got 80 for
MT3. As a result, his/her midterm exam scores are 65, 59, 80. Then his/her MT2 score will be dropped and
the other two, 65 and 80 will be used for his/her letter grade. Student C
indeed harvested the score-improving benefits of this
“drop-the-lowest-midterm-exam-score” policy.
Example 4: Student D also
did not have time to prepare for MT1 and MT2 and received 62 and 63,
respectively. He/she would thus also like to study extra hard for MT3. However, on the eve before MT3, he/she got
into a medical emergency and could not attend MT3. As a result, his/her midterm exam scores are 62, 63,
---. Then his/her MT3 score will be
dropped and the other two, 62 and 63 will be used for his/her letter grade.
It turns out that many
students have similar mentality as students C and D in
Examples 3 and 4, respectively. That is,
their plan is to study extra hard in a later exam and hope that it will
“make-up” for their earlier exam results. While this strategy sometimes
works, see Student C, any student who chooses this strategy has to bear his/her
own risk of having an unexpected medical emergency in the later exam, see
Student D. It is not possible for the instructor to give a make-up exam for
student D just because student C improved his/her score in this way but student
D could not (due to medical reasons). In a way it is similar to a situation
that a student only studies 95% of the materials and hoping that all the exam
questions come from that part. While it
is possible to gain a few extra points this way, the student has to bear that the
risk that the instructor may design a question out of the remaining 5% of the
materials. It is a relatively small risk but it is a risk that student has to
bear all by him/herself.
As a result, I would highly
discourage any student to take the above strategy. Instead, the right
strategy is to study as hard as possible for all your three exams. In this way, you will receive similar scores of all
three exams. It is true that there is no grade-improving benefit to be had but
you also do not need to worry about the risk of having any medical emergency
and/or official Purdue business that prevents you from attending the exam,
since you are well protected by the score-dropping policy.
·
The midterm
exam make-up policy