Grade on curve heha just like grandpa

[Anonymous No.10444217]

Claim: Grading on a curve discourages students to help each other learn material, and is not conducive with the egalitarian perception of college as a place whose primary goal is to educate all its patrons to the best of its abilities.

Premise 1: College ought to be, or is at least generally considered, a place and practice put in place and funded in order to educate as widely and thoroughly as possible.

Premise 2: Many college classes grade their students on a 'curve,' or relative scale to more easily determine students more proficient at the curriculum. The more students you outperform, and the more you outperform them by, the higher your grade in the class.*

Premise 3: Placing highly on these curves offers advantages for students' in their educational or personal careers.

Premise 4: A student who successfully helps their fellow classmates understand the material in a curved grading scheme is lowering their own score.

Conclusion: Students looking to perform well in courses with a curved grading scheme are generally incentivized not to help their classmates, barring paid tutoring or other deals.

*Note: There are other problems with curved grading schemes, such as the majority of the class performing very well or very poorly on a normal scale, but the best of those students will still get good marks despite being under or over challenged, which essentially boils down to lazy curriculum construction.

Discuss.

[Anonymous No.10444253]

>>10444217
>not inflation adjusted prices
wow

[Anonymous No.10444393]

>>10444253
>Pic is related to the text

Its not.

[Anonymous No.10444459]

>>10444217
>lazy curriculum construction
This is the entire problem. It's also indistinguishable with incompetent professors.

[Anonymous No.10444659]

>>10444217
>Graded on a curve
>A handful of your classmates use pic related
>You don't
This is your worst nightmare

[Anonymous No.10445234]

>>10444659
Is this a legitimate shill?
Nobody talks like that, and I hadn't heard of this until yesterday.

[Anonymous No.10445244]

>>10445234
I'm not that guy but I've been using it for a few months and find it useful, particularly for remembering theorems and definitions of stuff

[Anonymous No.10445250]

>>10444217
Median income is 60k? Fuck

[Anonymous No.10445278]

>>10445234
Not a shill. It's free software, runs on Linux and the whole bit. It's even in the repos in Debian. I've been using it for years and aced Uni effortlessly with it. I shill it on here a lot cuz it's probably the one thing that most profoundly enhanced my intellectual life and despite being an autist that hates every one of you, I still wanna spread the love. Give it a shot.

[Anonymous No.10445297]

>>10445250
FAMILY income, so between two people

[Anonymous No.10445320]

I knew a guy in pre-med who wanted to be a doctor and was actually smart and during a lab, his partners purposely gave him false information so that he wouldn't write a good lab report and mess up the curve for the other students

[Anonymous No.10446117]

>>10445244
I've always been skeptical of memorization when it isn't necessary, but I guess that's why I'm a math major and not a chemistry/bio major or in med school.

[Anonymous No.10446121]

Anyone goes to college for something they have the resources to self learn online and through textbooks is a puppet of the elite. Everyone knows degrees are worthless, yet they're too stupid to find other ways to prove their qualifications.

[Anonymous No.10446124]

>ace course
>runner-up has 65% points
>50% is supposed to be minimum for passing
>prof grades on curve and drops the bar for maximum grade to 60%
FUCK

[Anonymous No.10446148]

>>10445250
I'm making 67k and I am legitimately struggling to survive. How the hell can you survive making less than that? I'm talking legitimately skipping meals to save money here.

[Anonymous No.10446186]

>>10444393
Who are you quoting, retard?

[Anonymous No.10446203]

>>10446148

You must be an actual idiot w/r/t finances then, 67k should be more than enough unless you live somewhere like San Diego

[Anonymous No.10446227]

>>10446148
Don't waste so much money

[Anonymous No.10446258]

>>10444217
Grading in college is just retarded all around
>That one prof who always gives the same questions with slightly changed data and so the people who get the previous year's problems have a massive advantage
>That one guy who gets amazing student reviews only because he appears on time for lectures and gives extremely easy tests for grade padding
>That one prof who takes great pride in how many students fail his courses because he both can't teach shit, and gives absolutely brutal exams for anyone who hasn't gone over the literature a given amount of times
>That one prof who doesn't give you points because you proved some theorem not like he had it written in his materials

[Anonymous No.10446356]

Teamwork’s only good for retarded roasties chads and tyrones

[Anonymous No.10446480]

>>10446356
>t. guy who sabotages his classmates

[Anonymous No.10446799]

>>10446117
Spaced repetition is not necessarily memorization.

[Anonymous No.10446831]

>>10444217
University education as a whole is a meme.
>profs waste dozens of hours holding lectures in the age of the Internet and cheap video recording devices
>(optionally) mandatory attendance because humans are incapable of learning things on their own
>everyone must learn at least ~50% of the same things in the same amount of time to pass instead of mastering it (~90%) at their own speed
>retarded "watch this motherfucker solve problems for 90 minutes on a blackboard" classes because seeing the solution to a problem is the scientifically proven way of learning
>useless filler courses because students learning bullshit looks better than students learning "less"
>cancerous "university culture"

[Anonymous No.10446898]

>>10444217
'The curve' factors in that students from different years/backgrounds are more or less prepared to learn the material. You're not allowed to give every A's or F's. And it takes a ridiculous amount of work marking and preparing assignments/tests to 'make' a bell curve occur 'naturally'.

[Anonymous No.10446900]

>>10446898
*everyone

[Anonymous No.10446994]

>>10446117
Spaced repetition is my primary method for developing new insights and "leveling up" my mental scaffolding of any discipline. The times between seeing a new card, I often find my subconscious has worked through some implication I wasn't previously consciously aware of and when I see the card, the buried thread of understanding reveals itself. If you think SRS is just "memorization", you are a fool. Note that Von Neumann was renowned for his prodigious ability to memorize and he made it a point to be able to recall a vast corpus of mathematical formula.
Check this out: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

[Anonymous No.10447020]

where the fuck does one start
like, I'm tripping LSD
I want to understand nuclear physics..
without paying every cent away

what can be shared for free.

[Anonymous No.10447062]

>>10447020
Visit wikipedia and run through the sources it provides
You can learn anything at home
University is just a place for certification and verification

[Anonymous No.10447066]

>>10446994
SRS is according to you a tool to memorize, so I don't see your point. I also make a point to have knowledge of mathematical formulas relevant to my classes, but I don't memorize them through SRS or any other means, I learn how derive them (through SRS of doing the proof); I don't see how any flash card system would help with that.

[Anonymous No.10447106]

>>10447062
Its also the place you have to go if you want to both make money and have valuable resources to research your interests of study. The fact that you can learn the prereqs for this on your own but MUST pay your way through the system in order to be part of the community which influences research is the sticky part.

[Anonymous No.10447114]

>>10444659
a literal ad

[Anonymous No.10447179]

>>10444217
120k for a 4-year course? Bitch, please. Take a loan for 40k, move to Germany (or Austria, Italy, ..) for a few years and do your degree over there.

[Anonymous No.10447206]

>>10447066
>I don't see how any flash card system would help with that.
I went over how SRS helps me develop new insights in the post you replied to. There is literature that covers this so having an anecdote war is unproductive.
http://uweb.cas.usf.edu/~drohrer/pdfs/Rohrer&Taylor2006ACP.pdf
https://www.gwern.net/docs/spacedrepetition/2007-rohrer.pdf
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0279q9m1.pdf
>>10447114
>a literal ad
/biz/ suggested kneepads but hopefully this works

[Anonymous No.10447210]

>>10444659
What Android device has that aspect ratio?

[Anonymous No.10447245]

>>10447210
Nexus 9.

[Anonymous No.10447365]

>>10447245
Is it comfy for reading legally obtained textbook PDFs? The DPI seems great on that thing.

[Anonymous No.10447389]

>>10447206
You're right, I think I'm just annoyed that your vocabulary makes you seem like you try to sound smarter than you actually are, or maybe I'm just getting jaded to that style of writing which is so common on 4chan.

[Anonymous No.10447595]

>>10447365
It's quite comfy. Lighter than my 2017 iPad and slightly thinner so easier to hold. Should easily find a Nexus 9 on eBay for 100 bucks or so.
>>10447389
>vocab
aw, my bad my nig' naw'wht'm sayin' dis anki shit tight foo, muh dick

[Anonymous No.10447611]

>>10447389
salty as fuck

[Anonymous No.10447669]

>>10447611
keep conflating big words with good writing

[Anonymous No.10447671]

>>10447669
Conflate this dick with your lips, faggot

[Anonymous No.10447702]

What the fuck is grading on a curve?

t. europoor

[Anonymous No.10448330]

>>10447702
it's a coping mechanism for burgers and tyrones

[Anonymous No.10448393]

>>10445320
at first I was a bit mad but, that would definitely happen to him in med school too and if he's not street smart enough to know when he's being fucked with he'd end up supplying someone's painkiller addiction and catch a federal case. His labmates did him a favor in the long run

[Anonymous No.10448431]

>>10446148
Where the fuck do you live?

[Anonymous No.10448472]

>>10448330
>grading on a curve
so if everyone in class is retarded, people will still be able to pass?

[Anonymous No.10448478]

>>10447669
What big words did he use?

[Anonymous No.10448581]

>>10446258
>That one prof who doesn't give you points because you proved some theorem not like he had it written in his materials

>Prof gives us a bunch of "optional" homework tasks
>He says it doesn't count for grades unless you fail, in which case it might help you go from 4.5 to 5
>Don't do them, mostly because I forgot to do the second one and it snowballed from there
>Flash forward to exam, get a 4.5
>Suspicious
>Go to correction for the second or third time in my life
>Zero points in this exercise about radiation diagrams for an antenna array or sth
>My solution deviates by like one degree angle from his solution
>Ask him why I got zero points
>He says he doesn't understand my method and it's not the method he explained in class
>Tell him I can explain my method, and I can also explain why the solution is not exactly the same (I realized what my mistake was while checking my exam)
>He says he doesn't care
>Mfw I've been using this method at home in practice exercises and it works, and I use it over his method because it's more geometry based and it helps me understand what I'm doing
>He tells me I'm the only person who didn't do the homework
>He tells me to do the homework and...
>"Ok, I can do the homework and get a 5, I don't care that much about grades..."
>...then I can do the exam again
>"Optional my ass"

[Anonymous No.10448658]

>>10447671
who's salty now bud

[Anonymous No.10448690]

>>10448581
Crazy how much you pay for college yet they can't give the prof enough to give a shit.

[Anonymous No.10449424]

>>10448472
Precisely

[Anonymous No.10449429]

>>10448690
Profs will be niglets no matter how much you pay them
It is intrinsic to their being to be a blight

[Anonymous No.10449438]

>>10445320
Medshit BTFO. I would have done it to a medfag regardless of the curve.

[Anonymous No.10449454]

>>10448581
Report to the Dean. Fuck him.

[Anonymous No.10449455]

>>10446121
>yet they're too stupid to find other ways to prove their qualifications.
There's literally NO OTHER WAY to prove your qualifications for a profession that requires certification like engineering of any kind. Also, becoming a scientist of any kind is equally out of the question for someone without a degree.

[Anonymous No.10449589]

>>10449455
Hopefully the people who graduate with the most valuable degrees (i.e. whatever fancy name they give when they teach you to program), will realize that they can learn the same skills online or with books and prove their aptitude with Github portfolios and completed projects, rather than going into debt to go to college.

[Anonymous No.10449641]

>>10449454

This was 3 years ago, on my final bachelor's year. There was nothing to gain and I actually hold no grudge against the prof. He's just an old grumpy guy. Sure, what he did to me wasn't right, but I can understand his point of view ("this lazy fuck is the only one who hasn't done the homework and then makes up some method I can't understand and the solution doesn't exactly match") even if I don't share it. Repeating the exam was way less effort and trouble than reporting him or requesting a third person to review the exam.

>>10449455
>>10449589

You can prove your qualifications with certifications, online courses, and projects. However, not every company is going to be willing to hire someone who has no degree. And some countries (like my home country) demand a degree to be able to sign engineering projects. You obviously don't need a degree to release some code, but you sure do to sign the plans for a building, structure/utility calculations, etc.

[Anonymous No.10449656]

all grades are graded on a curve. the standard approach of 70-C/80-B/90-A is a grading curve. furthermore, the convention that 70 is a C is just that, a convention. if the course material is designed so that minimal mastery of the material gets you about 50% of the questions right and a C, that's not a bad thing, that's grading working properly.

plus, it's actually better to put the minimal mastery grade closer to 50%, because it gives you more power to discriminate at the upper end of the scale. nobody gives a shit whether you got a 20% or a 40%, you still failed, so why do we devote a whole 60% of the grading scale to failure? we're squashing all our descriptive power for true accomplishment into the top 30-40% of the scale.

[Anonymous No.10449696]

>>10449656

The American grading system is retarded. Exams are easier and grades are inflated. 70% is your European 5/10 or lower, so the dynamic range to discern good students from great students gets shortened.

In my home university, you could spot a bad student because he had to repeat 5-10 courses 2-5 times because students can actually fail exams. If you fail a final, you can repeat it once, and if you fail again then you have to repeat the course. The best grade in a course might not even be an 8, because 10 means actual perfection. When you finish your degree you get a bonus to your average depending on how many times did you have to repeat a final or a course. After the boost, if you have more than an 8 you're probably in the 90th percentile for STEM degrees, and there's going to be 1-2% of people who get a 10.

[Anonymous No.10449697]

very very related

[Anonymous No.10449742]

>>10449656
As the other anon said, you can still introduce a wider dynamic range into courses by making them harder, and still avoid all the relativism associated with curved grading.

[Anonymous No.10449750]

>>10449697
Just kill everybody IQ > 110

[Anonymous No.10449762]

>>10449697
>education is in fixed supply
literally read a book

[Anonymous No.10449766]

>>10449762
education matters not, you can't turn a 95 IQ farmer's son into a lawyer

[Anonymous No.10449788]

>>10449589
You seem to think that every university program is CS. It's not. There are no github portfolios for engineering degrees. No one is going to hire a civil engineer without a degree. Where I live, you need a P.Eng to practice on your own and to get that, you need to work under an engineer for a certain period of time. No engineering firm is ever going to hire you without a degree. If you get a diploma as a technologist, you still won't ever have a path to becoming an engineer without going to school because no one is going to trust you with tasks you're not qualified to perform. In the business world, this is a liability that isn't worth taking for any employer, no matter how smart you think you are.

It's also extremely arrogant to think you can learn everything on your own. Self-taught wunderkind geniuses are extremely rare. Do you think Newton didn't go to university? Do you think Ramanujan learned absolutely everything on his own? Every man is not an island and people who subscribe to this mindset often take many of the opportunities they have had for granted. Granted, there are lots of shitty instructors at universities and some courses might not be perfect - they might be downright bad - but by attending those courses, you still come out better than if you go it alone because you get the benefit of getting feedback that you won't get from some coursera shit.

Frankly, if you aren't responsible enough to pay down student debt, you probably aren't responsible enough to build bridges anyway.

[Anonymous No.10449849]

>>10449788
>if you aren't responsible enough to pay down student debt, you probably aren't responsible enough to build bridges anyway.
Strawman argument, cuck mentality.
>no one is going to trust you with tasks you're not qualified to perform
Valid argument but there should be other ways than paying a gorillion dollars for university to get the necessary qualifications.
>It's also extremely arrogant to think you can learn everything on your own.
Most people practically learn on their own at university anyway, attending a lecture is no different than reading a book/watching a recorded lecture. And if you get stuck on something, you aren't on your own in the age of the Internet.
>you get the benefit of getting feedback that you won't get from some coursera shit
You're comparing the average self-learner to the good university students. I doubt that someone making a genuine effort to learn something on their own wouldn't end up with more knowledge than the brainlets who are just in it for the degree and pass with shit grades, despite the lack of quantifiable feedback.

[Anonymous No.10449867]

>>10449849
>Valid argument but there should be other ways than paying a gorillion dollars for university to get the necessary qualifications.

It's called public education. Europeans invented it a while ago.

>You're comparing the average self-learner to the good university students. I doubt that someone making a genuine effort to learn something on their own wouldn't end up with more knowledge than the brainlets who are just in it for the degree and pass with shit grades, despite the lack of quantifiable feedback.

University courses are designed for the average student. If you're smarter than the average university student and you are self-disciplined sure, you'll learn more on your own than at uni, because uni pace is too slow for you. If you're average, though, I don't think there are any benefits.

[Anonymous No.10449898]

>>10449788
Dude I'm sure you made a thoughtful post but from your first sentence I can see you didn't carefully read mine.

[Anonymous No.10450065]

>>10444217
what? why you suck so much dick OP
how hard is
>pic unrelated

[Anonymous No.10451587]

>>10449849
>Most people practically learn on their own at university anyway, attending a lecture is no different than reading a book/watching a recorded lecture
At university you get tested on your knowledge and are held to some standard.

[Anonymous No.10451890]

>>10450065
so you're mad at OP that you couldn't read the post?