Grading Information

The basic idea behind grading "things" is to place them in into categories
based on certain criteria. Eggs, meat and lumber are graded this way. 

When applying assessment to student learning, the same thing is done:
students are placed into categories based on some form of judgement 
of their performance in various intellectual endeavors: test results, 
homework, problem solving capabilities, communication skills, etc.
At the University of Washington, 34 catagories are used to grade students
(0.7, 0.8, ... 4.0). 

How students get placed in these categories varies from one course to another
and from one instructor to another.

In this course, you will receive percentage grade for each of three components:
Q (for quizes, an average of several), M (for midterm exam) and F (for final exam).
An overall weighted average of these three grades will be assigned to each student.

G = 0.40*G1 + 0.35*G2 + 0.25*G3

where G1 is the largest value of (Q,M,F),  G2 is the next largest and G3 is the smallest.

In this way, students are rewarded more for those components they do best in!
(40% for the highest of (Q,M,F), 
 35% of the next and 
 25% of the lowest of the three components.)

The decimal grade is then computed as:  
DG = 0.7 + 0.127*(G-70) 
with the following exceptions:

if G is greater than 96%,  DG = 4.0 and

if G is less than 70%,     DG = 0.0 

NOTE: failure is G less than 70%