Calcumalations

"I just need 70% to pass." (alt: I just need 102% to pass)

"If I can somehow get 95% on the final I'll get a 7... so what's a pointer again?"

"Why am I wasting time on this 1% question when I could be studying for the final?"

So I've done some calculations to mentally prepare myself for the upcoming semester, and they basically reinforce the lesson I learned at the end of my first semester at uni.  And relearned every semester since:

The more marks you get during semester, the fewer marks you need on the final.

I've got a spreadsheet which I've modified from previous semesters, which basically lists all my assessment pieces and their weightings for each subject, and as I get marks back I enter them into the spreadsheet and it tells me numbers like how much I need on the final to get a 7, say, or how many marks I've accumulated compared to how many marks I could have got so far.  And generally what happens is as the semester progresses I watch the marks slip away and wish I'd paid more attention to those darn one-percenters!

So this semester I decided to try out some numbers before I got the marks back, just to get an intuitive feel for how much each assignment I miss/mess up will affect my final mark.  The results:

If I get 100% in every pre-exam assessment, I'll need the following percentages on the exam to get a 7:

79%, 63%, 67%, 70%.

If I get 80%:
87%, 93%, 91%, 90%

I get some surprising results sometimes.  For example, that second subject has a lot of small assessments and a fairly small (40%) final exam.  If I get 75% across all those small assignments, I need a perfect final for a 7; if I only aim for a 6 I just need 75% (obviously).  When I go into finals, my thinking process goes something like "there's only 10% difference between a 6 and a 7 so I'll just need 85% or so, maybe a bit extra to make up for those assignments I missed but I'll be right".  Which is totally wrong!

Anyway, imagining an exam block where I only need 63% to get a high distinction has inspired me to study extra hard on those insignificant assignments!  I just spent the better part of today finishing off two such assignments (and just in case anyone else spends three hours and five A4 pages searching for the reason her final answer is out by 3.07... THE MOMENT OF INERTIA OF A SLENDER ROD ROTATING ABOUT ITS CENTRE OF MASS IS DIFFERENT TO THAT OF ONE ROTATING ABOUT ONE END) and I'm pleased to say that possibly for the first time in my life I've handed in an assignment before the day it was due.

Of course, I'm probably going to remember an error in my working in the middle of the night and kick myself for handing it in too soon.  Maybe next time I'll just smile to myself in satisfaction and hand it in on the proper day :)