8.01 Tutoring Results, Fall 1998

The tutoring grade for each student was found by computing the ratio

         Adjusted sessions attended
        ----------------------------
          Adjusted total sessions

where Adjusted total sessions = Mon students: 12 - number of excused absences
Tues, Wed, Thurs students: 11 - numbers of excused absences

Adjusted sessions attended = Number of sessions which the student either attended, or for which the student was exempted. Note that all students were exempted for the first week of tutoring, 9/14 - 9/17 (even those who were not then enrolled in the course), and that each student has one additional automatic exemption, in addition to any exemptions earned through the Review Quizzes.

The average of the tutoring grades for all 8.01 students was 94%, which I thought was wonderful.

The passing grade for tutoring has been set at 60.0, and other numerical grades can be translated into letter grades according to the following chart:

NUMERICAL GRADE	LETTER GRADE
86 - 100	A
74 - 85	B
60 - 73	C
40 - 59	D
0 - 39	F

A histogram of the grades is shown below:

One of the surprising (and, alas, disappointing) features of the tutoring grades was the wrong-way correlation with overall grade. Among students who got an A in the course, the average tutoring grade was 99.5%. Among B students, it was 96.2%. For C students it was 93.7%, but for D and F students it was only 81.6%. It seems that a significant number of failing students decided that they would rather fail than come to tutoring. It would be wrong to infer, however, that most students who received D's and F's did not come to tutoring—in fact, 47% of them had 100% tutoring records.

--- Alan Guth, 8.01 Lecturer

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Last modified: Monday, December 21, 1998 10:45 am