Re: Grades at Princeton (Was: UCLA physics course (non-rant))

[Lois Breur Krause <krause@CLEMSON.EDU>]

> I don't have a solution for your puzzlement, but the phenomena are about
> the same at Rice.  The mean grades in courses are very reliably
> Humanities>Social Sciences>Science>Engineering.  But the greatest number of
> A+ grades are in science and engineering!   Can anybody with a statistical
> background tell us how or when to  say "Bimodal"?

Stat background (PhD minor and years in the trade) answering.  This is not
necessarily bi-modal, just that Rice (and other eng. schools with a strong
reputation) likely gets its share of really bright kids, who stand out well
above the norm in engineering courses.  Kids who are exceptionally good at
logical thinking. The rest would be a normal distribution.  So you see a
normal bell curve, with a superimposed spike of outliers at the high end.
Professors would use the A+ to demonstrate performance well above the
average.

Bimodal would properly describe two peaks of relatively similar area with a
separation  or dip between them.


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Dr. Lois Breur Krause
Department of Geological Sciences
442 Brackett Hall
Clemson University
Clemson SC  29634

teaching chemistry, physics, astronomy and geology to elementary education
majors.

How We Learn and Why We Don't: Student Survival Guide,
available from International Thompson Publishing, ISBN 0324-011970

http://home.earthlink.net/~breurkrause

krause@clemson.edu

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