Dear Class,
Congratulations on completing the clinical epidemiology course!! I want to thank our outstanding TA's and faculty for their hard work helping teach the course and grading the exams and all of you for your high level of interest and participation.
Your exam will be in your mailbox in Mission Hall if you have one; if not you can pick it up from Olivia. Your overall score and grade are at the top of the exam. The answer key is on the course website, and of course if you missed the final examination discussion on the last day of class it is not too late to watch the recording!
I personally checked the exams of five people who missed getting a higher grade by < 2 points and in one case was able to find enough points to improve the grade. In others, the additional points I found were not enough to change the grade, but I did give the additional points anyway. If you see some scoring in black ink with little TN initials on your exam, those scores reflect my personal attention.
(Tip: if you are having trouble reading the red scrawl next to your answer for #3g, and got -3 on that one, it probably says something like "(forgot to) use (subtract) adjacent rows," which is what you need to do to get an interval LR.)
For those interested in how they did on the exam compared with other students and how we computed the grades, see below. If you can't see the histograms in this e-mail, you can read the attached Word document.
First, here is the distribution of scores on the final exam (for the 53 students who turned it in). The average and median were a few points lower than usual this year.
. sum exam, detail
Exam
-------------------------------------------------------------
Percentiles Smallest
1% 28.5 28.5
5% 51.5 51
10% 60 51.5 Obs 53
25% 70.5 51.5 Sum of Wgt. 53
50% 84.5 Mean 79.68868
Largest Std. Dev. 14.93615
75% 90 97.5
90% 96.5 100.5 Variance 223.0887
95% 100.5 102 Skewness -1.043876
99% 102.5 102.5 Kurtosis 4.227916
. histogram exam, bin(50) ti ("Epi 204 Final Exam, 2015") saving(Exam2015, replace) ///
xlab(40(10)100) freq
The overall grade is based 60% on the homework and 40% on the exam. To get your homework total I computed the percent correct on each assignment, dropped the lowest, then averaged the 9 remaining homework assignments, counting the "write your own homework/exam question" as one assignment, with scores of 90%, 100% or 110%.
Here is the distribution of homework scores:
sum hw, detail
HW
-------------------------------------------------------------
Percentiles Smallest
1% 22.91415 22.91415
5% 76.62841 73.4007
10% 78.11255 76.62841 Obs 53
25% 87.33267 76.8963 Sum of Wgt. 53
50% 93.53792 Mean 90.42219
Largest Std. Dev. 11.86413
75% 96.7405 100.2412
90% 99.24154 100.3419 Variance 140.7577
95% 100.3419 101.2863 Skewness -3.638491
99% 102.2592 102.2592 Kurtosis 20.87617
Overall total scores were similar this year to past years. This year exam scores were lower but HW scores a bit higher, and because they got weighted 60% instead of 50% like last year, the overall scores (shown below) were very similar.
. sum total, detail
total
-------------------------------------------------------------
Percentiles Smallest
1% 34.14849 34.14849
5% 66.73778 57.8842
10% 70.57705 66.73778 Obs 53
25% 81.35833 68.19984 Sum of Wgt. 53
50% 89.02857 Mean 86.12878
Largest Std. Dev. 11.86694
75% 93.80028 97.97038
90% 96.80729 98.18024 Variance 140.8243
95% 98.18024 101.0051 Skewness -1.940803
99% 101.5555 101.5555 Kurtosis 8.507256
histogram total, bin(50) ti ("Epi 204 Overall Score, 2016") freq xlab ///
(40(10)100) saving(Total2015,replace)
Total scores by year, Epi 204
|
Year |
Mean |
Median |
SD |
|
2010 |
85.64 |
87.55 |
7.15 |
|
2011 |
89.16 |
90.5 |
5.98 |
|
2012 |
88.04 |
89.76 |
9.94 |
|
2013 |
88.93 |
91.09 |
9.76 |
|
2014 |
86.59 |
87.68 |
7.22 |
|
2015 |
86.65 |
89.29 |
10.5 |
|
2016 |
86.13 |
89.03 |
11.9 |
If you took the course for a letter grade, those with overall scores 59-68.9 got a D, 69-78.9 got a C, 79-88.9 got a B and 89+ got an A. As in the past, I set the cutoff for an "A" just below the median. If you are not taking it for a letter grade, it's the grade you would have received. I have not been able to post overall scores on the CLE, but Clair will get to it soon.
I hope you enjoyed the course! We enjoyed teaching it. Don’t forget to fill out the course evaluation!
Happy Holidays!
Tom for the Epi 204 2016 team