All:

I have current grade information posted on D2L.  What I hope you are able to
see is:

* Number of homeworks and little quizzes I have from you, out of 40.

* Raw homework points, out of 400.

* Adjusted homework out of 50.  This means:  I drop the lowest 6
  homework/little-quiz grades, take the sum out of 340, then scale that
  down to 50.

* Exam 1 grade out of 100.

* Graphing quiz score out of 50.

* Exam 2 grade out of 100.

* Final exam grade should be showing up as 0% for everyone.  (You haven't taken
  the final yet.)  The final is worth 150 points.

* As noted on the handout for the first day of class, this totals up to 450:
  HW 50 + exam 1 100 + graphing quiz 50 + exam 2 100 + final 150 = 450.

* The "final grade" column should show you your currrent grade out of 300
  (i.e. homework/quizzes, exam 1, graphing quiz, exam 2).  This is your grade
  going into the final.  It should also show you something out of 1290 which is
  completely nonsense you should ignore because D2L is silly enough to add up
  *all* columns (including things like the number of homeworks received) even
  though I've asked it not to.

Again, please note that I can't see what you see.  I see the grades for *all*
students in a spreadsheet-like view; I can't see a single-student view.  (D2L
has a "role switch" feature, but it doesn't work for grades, which is the only
thing I use D2L for.  Grr.)  So, if you're not seeing the information I
described above, please let me know.

There are four more columns in D2L:  "A need" through "D need".  This is the
percent you need to get on the final in order to get A through D.  You can
compute this for yourself, but I computed it for you.  Here's where it comes
from, shown by example.

Sally Student had 42/50 for homework, 81/100 for exam 1, 44/50 for the graphing
quiz, and 76/100 for exam 2.  This adds up to 42+81+44+76 = 243 out of 300.
Now, 243/300= 81.0% so Sally has a low B going into the final.

What does Sally need to get on the final in order to get an A?  Well, an A is
90%, and there are 450 points for the semester.  So, she needs 400 points to
get an A.  Her current 243 and her final grade out of 150 (call that "x") have
to add up to 400.  That is,

	(243 + x) / 450 = 0.9
	(243 + x) = 0.9 * 450 = 400
	x = 400 - 243 = 157

Now, the final is only 150 points, so, sadly, Sally will not be able to get a
157 on it and so she will not be able to get an A for the course.

What does she need to do to keep her B?

	(243 + x) / 450 = 0.8
	(243 + x) = 0.8 * 450 = 360
	x = 360 - 243 = 117

So, Sally needs 117/150 on the final, or 78%, to keep her B.

And so on for C and D.

In D2L, since Sally can't get an A no matter what, I left her "A need" column
blank.  D2L is stupid and shows my blank to you as a 0%.  Sally's "B need"
column shows 78%.  Etc.

Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

Thanks!

----------------------------------------------------------------
John Kerl
Graduate student, University of Arizona Department of Mathematics
kerl@math.arizona.edu
http://math.arizona.edu/~kerl