A.6 Grades and Other Inconveniences

As it turns out, I have to produce a grade for your work in this course. Given that, I want to be sure that the grade reflects something useful: the level to which you showed a grasp of the content and skills that this course is about.

Things I don’t want this grade to reflect:

whether you had a bad day during midterms
whether a particular concept took a little longer to master
whether I decided a particular question was worth 3 points or 4 points

To this end, this course will be using a method called proficiency grading or standards-based grading. This sounds very fancy but what it comes down to is this: focusing not on a single test, or particular questions, or points (or half-points) – but on what you have demonstrated that you can do.

Your grade comes from two main components:

Content is about the specific topics we’ll address in this course, like “the matrix regression equation” or “inference in multiple logistic regression.”

Engagement is about “statistician skills,” including communicating statistical concepts and results to others, asking questions about their work, and working together to produce knowledge. Engagement involves being a part of the community we’re building in this course – which is important in itself, improves your and your classmates’ learning of content, and prepares you to join the broader statistical community.

Honestly, though, it can’t be more ridiculous than “My average is 89.4 so that’s a B+, but if I’d lost one point on that quiz back in Week 2 instead of two points, my average would be an 89.5 which rounds to 90 which is A-.”

I realize that this system may be new to you, and if so, it may feel difficult to navigate at first. I’m happy to talk with you about all of this stuff – how you’re doing, pacing and scheduling, whether you’re on track to achieve your target grade, what you might want to focus on next.

A.6.1 Overview: How to Get an A (or Whatever)

Use this section as a quick intro (or reminder) for the grading system in the course. But be sure to read the more detailed sections below as they become relevant, or if you want more info :)

So, how do you get the grade you want in this course?

Prepare for each class by doing the reading and pre-class questions
Attend each class, and reflect on the class at the end with a wrap-up comment
Make an earnest attempt at the practice problems each week
Reach Excellent or Satisfactory proficiency on the required number of Assessments for your target grade
- This sounds vague for a reason :) Everyone has different study techniques that work well for them – and they may be different in different courses. If you’re not sure you’ve found yours yet, experiment! I’m happy to offer advice as well.
- Remember, you can re-attempt Assessments if you don’t reach your desired proficiency level right away!
Prepare a strong project presentation to show off your applied-stats skills. This is a big one, but it’s very attainable as long as you:
- Submit project components for feedback throughout the semester (and give feedback on your classmates’)
Retain a decent amount of this knowledge by the end of the semester, for the final check :)

In specific numerical terms, here are the things you need to do to achieve each base grade:

Not to be a downer, but please do note those engagement requirements for the D and A base grades! This means that even if things come up and you decide you need to pull back to the ungraded option (it happens!), you still have to reach Partial engagement in order to pass. And you can’t earn all those engagement credits in just a couple weeks at the end of the semester – it takes time. So even if you feel like the course isn’t going well, or isn’t your top priority, think about staying on pace with engagement throughout the semester. Honestly, the course will be more interesting that way :)

For a D base grade (or Pass, if you’re using the ungraded option), you must do all of these:
- Achieve 1 Excellent + 4 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 3 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Progressing proficiency on the Project
- Reach at least Partial engagement
For a C base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 3 Excellent + 2 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 3 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Satisfactory proficiency on the Project
For a B base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 5 Excellent + 1 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 3 Excellent + 2 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Satisfactory proficiency on the Project
For an A- base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 5 Excellent + 1 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 4 Excellent + 2 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Excellent proficiency on the Project
For an A base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 6 Excellent Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 5 Excellent + 1 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Excellent proficiency on the Project
- Reach at least Satisfactory engagement

A.6.2 Assessments

Content is assessed primarily using Assessments. These are short, time-limited, solo activities that address a specific core topic. You can think of them as quizzes if that makes you happy. Or don’t, if it doesn’t. On Assessments, your goal is to demonstrate two levels of understanding: Level 1 is more about a basic grasp of the topic, while Level 2 is about being able to use the concepts and integrate them with an application and your larger understanding. Each level is graded as demonstrating one of four proficiency categories:

Excellent work shows a complete grasp of the topic or skill. Answers and reasoning are communicated clearly.
- Excellent work can contain minor errors that aren’t relevant. For example, an arithmetic error isn’t a problem in itself (this is not an arithmetic class, thank goodness). But it would be a problem if your statistical knowledge should have told you that the answer didn’t make sense, like if you calculated a probability to be less than zero.
Satisfactory work shows a solid grasp of the core of the topic or skill, with some smaller gaps or errors.
Progressing work shows a partial grasp of the topic or skill, but with some gaps that are pretty fundamental. It might be hard to understand the reasoning or the results.
Non-assessable work doesn’t provide enough information to assess understanding. It might have significant omissions or so many errors that it doesn’t make sense to address each one of them.

Note that these ESPN levels are the only actual “grades” on proficiency-graded assignments. In certain places on Moodle or Gradescope, you may be able to see a numerical score, but those numbers don’t mean anything independently – they’re just arbitrary values because the system makes me enter a number. The letter is what counts!

“Final” Project: Arguably the coolest part of this course is the data project, in which you find and analyze a dataset on a topic that interests you. You’ll work on parts of this project throughout the course (hence the air quotes on “final”), culminating in a presentation to your classmates. The project is graded on the ESPN scale with an extra category, Wow, for work that’s really impressive – beyond the expectations of this course. You’ll get lots more details about the project as we go on.

Final Check: This is an end-of-semester activity that can draw on any of the material from the course. You’ll get more details about the Final Check later.

A.6.3 Engagement credit details

Engagement – helping to build a statistical community – is a vital part of the course. It’s assessed based on Engagement Credits. You earn credits by demonstrating your statistical communication skills and your contribution to the community.

The discussion below gets pretty detailed! But remember, the short version is secretly very simple. If you do the expected work in the course:

do the pre-class questions
attend class and post your wrap-up comments
make a full attempt at the practice problems each week
complete your project components, and help your peers with feedback on theirs
…but take a couple days off at some point

…then you’ll be fine: your engagement will not affect your grade. (Specifically, you will reach the Standard engagement level.) You only need to think about these details if (a) you’ve missed some of the assigned work and want to make up for it, or (b) you’re interested in showing above-and-beyond participation.

If you miss out on any of this regular stuff (forget to do the pre-class questions, miss a day of class, turn in practice problems late, etc.) you can compensate by doing some posting to Topic Conversation forums.

Of course, you can also do Topic Conversation posting if you want engagement to improve your course grade :)

So why is there this complicated credit system?

It’s really important to engage consistently and earnestly in a course like this. It helps you learn, and it helps all of your classmates learn by creating a lively and supportive community. When something is that important, I think it should be measured.
Tracking engagement makes it possible to recognize situations where a student might not be doing great on Assessments, but is working really hard and contributing to the class community.
Having lots of different ways to earn engagement credits gives you more flexibility, and recognizes that different folks may approach the course in different ways.

With that in mind, here’s the details:

Activities and credits

Here’s a table of the things that earn engagement credits. A point to note here is that most of these activities affect other people. Engagement isn’t just about you and your learning – it’s about how you contribute to the experiences of your classmates.

To earn credit, each activity has to be a respectable effort. Coming to class doesn’t count if you sleep the whole time; “lol same” doesn’t count as a substantive Topic Conversation post. (But saying something in a forum post that turns out to be incorrect is fine – being engaged doesn’t mean always being right!)

Activity	Credits
Complete pre-class questions	1
Attend class AND submit wrap-up comment	2
Post to a Topic Conversation (up to 4 in a week*)	1
Submit practice problems on time (honest effort)	4
Submit practice problems up to 1 week late	2
Submit project component on time	4
Submit project component up to 1 week late	2
Provide peer feedback on time, per person	2

There may also be special activities during the semester that could earn you engagement credits; I’ll announce them if any come up.

*That is, you can earn up to 4 of these credits in a week, for 4 substantive posts.

Effects on course grades

Your engagement credit total is translated into a general engagement level, which then modifies your course grade (or doesn’t). The exact numbers are:

Level	Credits	Grade Effect
Excellent	200+	Add 1/3 letter if base grade is B or below
Standard	170-200	No effect
Partial	140-170	Subtract 1/3 letter
Nope	below 140	Prof’s discretion

A shorthand way to remember these thresholds is:

Standard engagement is doing all the “standard stuff” (attendance, PQs, project components and feeback, practice problems), except you completely peace out for a week (miss 3 days of class and 1 practice problem set)
Excellent engagement is Standard engagement, plus two Topic Conversation posts each week (and you do all of the practice problem sets, though you can still miss a few classes)
Partial engagement is Standard engagement, except you miss 3 weeks instead of just 1
“Nope” is…less engaged than that.
- This generally translates into a larger subtraction from the course grade. But there are sometimes special circumstances, which is why it says “Prof’s discretion” – I decide what to do in these cases individually.
- Again, if you find yourself in such circumstances, please talk to me or a dean! We are here to help you get back on track, even if your goals have changed.

Of course, most folks don’t find themselves in one of those specific scenarios :) It’s more likely that you’d, say, forget to do the PQs or miss a day of class, turn in some practice problems late, do a couple of Topic Conversation posts because you have a question about something…it’s flexible, which means it can be complicated. That’s why I suggest:

Tracking engagement

The TAs/graders for this course have the job of keeping track of your engagement. This is not an easy task, especially when folks do lots of Topic Conversation posts or turn things in late. So I strongly recommend that you also track your own engagement, so that you can confirm your official totals and contact the TAs if you think anything is off.

Many people find it’s easiest to track your own engagement in the online spreadsheet, then share the link with the TAs as needed – this means you’ll also be able to see your engagement progress at a glance, and won’t have to wait for the TAs to post points on Moodle. But other folks prefer simply to create a text file each week listing all their accomplishments. (I recommend adding to it each time you do something, so you don’t have to go digging through your history at the end of the week!)

When you do your engagement tracking, be sure to include links to each discussion post for which you want credit. That way, if the TA misses one, you can just send the link, and the TA can easily find and confirm it. The easiest way for you to manage this is just to record the permalink to each of your posts right when you post it, so you don’t have to wade through all of the forums to find them later :)

A.6.4 Actual numbers

Base Grades

Here’s my philosophy of what grades mean:

A C student could get by in the next Stats course they take, with hard work and getting help when needed. So the student has demonstrated a basic familiarity with the core topics of this course, some familiarity with non-core topics, and some practice with statistical communication.
- A D student hasn’t shown the level of proficiency of a C student. They’ve demonstrated familiarity with some core and non-core topics, but there are major gaps; they’ve done minimal work on statistical communication.
A B student can do everything a C student can do, plus extra. They’ve shown stronger mastery of the core topics, more grasp of non-core topics, and solid statistical communication skills.
An A- student can do everything a B student can do, plus extra. They’ve shown a solid grasp of all the core topics and most of the non-core topics. They’ve consistently demonstrated an ability to contribute to the statistical dialogue to boost their learning and that of their classmates.
An A student can do everything an A- student can do, plus extra. They’ve shown a true understanding of the course topics and a facility with applying them in context – and explaining them to others.

Here’s how that translates into the assessments above. Remember, there are 6 total Assessments. You show off your Level 1 and Level 2 skills on the same Assessment – you don’t have to take them separately :)

For a D base grade (or Pass, if you’re using the ungraded option), you must do all of these:
- Achieve 1 Excellent + 4 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 3 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Progressing proficiency on the Project
- Reach at least Partial engagement
For a C base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 3 Excellent + 2 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 3 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Satisfactory proficiency on the Project
For a B base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 5 Excellent + 1 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 3 Excellent + 2 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Satisfactory proficiency on the Project
For an A- base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 5 Excellent + 1 Satisfactory Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 4 Excellent + 2 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Excellent proficiency on the Project
For an A base grade, you must do all of these:
- Achieve 6 Excellent Level 1 proficiencies
- Achieve 5 Excellent + 1 Satisfactory Level 2 proficiencies
- Achieve Excellent proficiency on the Project
- Reach at least Satisfactory engagement

Those “Satisfactory” marks mean “S or better”, by the way. If you have 5 E’s and 1 S for Level 2 questions, that still meets the A- threshold for Level 2, even though technically you don’t have two S’s :)

If you’d like an analogy, consider weight training. You can do (the statistical equivalent of) one-arm bicep curls with free weights in class. But in the real world, you’ll be rowing – you have to train both arms. And don’t skip leg day!

Again, there are multiple types of thinking that are really central to this course – mastering core concepts, getting familiar with more advanced topics, working on statistical communication, and applying everything to your own data. That’s why you have to do all of the things on the list in order to achieve each base grade. (But see modifications, below.)

A note about the project: You will see from the table above that the project is a Big Deal. That’s true for a reason: the project is the part of this course that is closest to what you will do when practicing statistics in the real world. You are combining your skills with content and communication, and stepping out of textbook examples into real data.

That said: please don’t let this stress you out too much! You will be working on the project throughout the entire semester; you will submit components of it for feedback from instructors and peers; you will have plenty of time to retry, polish, and improve those components. The project might be the most important assessment in the course (and arguably the most interesting), but it is not meant to be the most intimidating. In all my years teaching stat courses with projects, at all different levels, I have almost never seen a student perform worse on the project than on other forms of assessment. Usually students do better on the project, because they’re more invested in the analysis!

Modifications to Base Grades

Grades also, you may recall, have these pluses and minuses attached to them. (So fancy!) Your base grade is modified based mainly on your level of engagement. The Final Check can also modify your course grade, although honestly, for most people it doesn’t.

The default level of engagement (Standard) means there is no modification to your course grade – you get whatever base grade you earned based on Assessments and the project. Excellent-level engagement raises your course grade by 1/3 letter if your base grade is B or below; Partial-level engagement lowers your course grade by 1/3 letter. Engagement that doesn’t reach the Partial threshold may have a larger impact on your course grade.

Finally, there is a threshold-mismatch bonus (please let me know if you think of a better name for this). Suppose you reach a certain base grade, but you also achieve most (but not all) of the requirements for the next-higher base grade. Then you can add 1/3 letter to your course grade. This bonus applies only if your base grade is B or below.

A.6.5 Special cases

Ungraded option

This course is available to take on an Ungraded (credit/no credit) basis, if you are not a Math or Stat major. See the registrar’s rules on this here. If you take the course on an Ungraded basis, you can’t count it toward your distributional requirements. You have until Thursday, November 13 to ask the registrar to switch your grading basis (or switch it back if you change your mind).

If you’re debating whether to take the class Ungraded, I’m always happy to talk with you about it (though you do not have to get my permission, or even inform me!). I will not Judge You for taking the course Ungraded; there are lots of reasons why this can be a good idea, and ultimately it’s about what is right for you as a person and a student.

If you’ve never taken a course Ungraded before, please note that you are the one who makes that happen! You can tell me about your decision if you want, but I don’t and can’t do anything to make it official. You have to edit your registration via the form on the registrar’s website.

I do not do anything different internally if you’re taking the course Ungraded (again, I may not even know about it). I calculate your grade in the usual way; a D- or higher counts as Credit, anything else is No Credit. One nice thing about our assessment system is that you can gauge your own progress based on the concepts and skills you’ve mastered; but I also encourage you to chat with me about how you’re doing, especially if you plan to go on to another Stat course.

A gloomy moment: Note that all of the course components – including the project, Final Check, and engagement – still matter if you are taking the course Ungraded. In order to pass the course, your project must be at least at the P level, and you must reach the D threshold for Assessments and engagement – and your Final Check must be, well, good enough not to drag that down too far.

As always, if you find yourself in extenuating circumstances, I urge you to talk to me or a dean or both. Depending on the situation, we can talk about options like work flexibility, alternative assessments, withdrawing from the course, etc.