Pre test results

I will put your pre test results on the door of my office. You can take a look for the next two weeks. After that, I will take them down. The score is calcluated as follows:

pre test score = # correct - 1/3*number incorrect.

For example, if you got 12 correct and 18 incorrect, your score would be a 6.

Some of you got a negative number. This will be treated as a 0. This means that you did not come into the class with any particular knowledge of econ. I would expect most of you would be somewhere in this range, either 0 or very close to it.

This procedure corrects for the effect of guessing because you would expect to get 3 wrong for every 1 correct on the questions for which you guess.

When you establish your starting value, here is how you calculate your improvement portion of your grade:

A maximum of 15% of the class grade will be earned in improvement.

Your initial pre test score will be the percent you start with. If you got 6 points, you start with 6% towards your improvement portion.

If you score 20 or above on the pre test, you need to maintain your score on the post test so that it is at least 20 points after correcting for guessing. If you do, then you get the full improvement points. If your post test score drops, then the intial high score was due to guessing (very good guessing), and your score will be reduced by 1% for each 1 point below 20 on the post test. There are only 1 or 2 people out of more than 200 students in this category.

For everyone else, your score will be determined by taking (15-pre test)/(20-pre test) and multiplying by the improvement in your score. So for example, if you scored 12 on the pre test, after correcting for guessing, your score would be 6. This means that you will start with 6% of the improvement points already. For each additional point on the post test, you would receive 9/14 = 0.64% towards increasing your improvment points. If you got 21 correct and 9 incorrect on the post test, your score, after correcting for guessing would be, 18. This represents an incrase of 12 points, and this would translate into 7.68% added to your 6% for a total of 13.68% for improvement.

For those of you who take the time to study this procedure, basically, if you can get 20 points on the post test, after correcting for guessing, you will have earned all the the improvement points. If you cannot, then for each point you improve, you will get some fraction of a total point added to your improvement grade.

Kuo