I don't get how some profs mark….

[Balain]

I have yet to talk to him to find out what he wanted exactly, but…..

So our first assignment in a course (a group assignment) we got 96% on. Come the mid term exam everyone does bad by the sounds of it. Anyways the first question on the exam was the part I did for the assignment. Remember now we got 96% on that. my exam 0/10 with the comment "There is no evidence you know what a blah blah blah is"

[Artemis97]

Whoah... Getting nothing on a test is... wow. Talking to the prof about exactly what he wanted would be good. Maybe you misunderstood an instruction or something? He might even let you retake the test if you ask nicely enough.

If there wasn't a misunderstanding, and you really think he's grading you unfairly, you may want to consider going to the department head.

Anyways, good luck with sorting it all out.

[Jay R]

There's no way we can critique his critique without seeing your work.

The best I can do is this. I've made similiar comments on students papers in management classes. When I've done so, the papers usually read like this:

"X is an important tool in modern management. Many companies are now using X to help them make thoughtful and well planned decisions. The use of X improves the ability of managers to compete in today's challenging business environment..."

On and on for pages with no specific detail about what X is, or how it is used, or what it is for.

The paper could be turned in for an accounting class by changing X to "double-entry bookkeeping", a project management class by saying "Gantt chart", a statistics class by saying "hypothesis testing", etc.

The change would work, because the paper doesn't say anything about double-entry bookkeeping, Gantt charts, hypothesis testing, or anything else.

I recommend that you re-read the answer you gave, and ask yourself if it gives any clear specifics about the topic.

Also, even if they are on the same topic, the exam question won't be the same question, and you won't have written the same answer. For instance, if you actually used a hypothesis test in the group paper, and then were asked to define it on the test, and wrote around it without really defining it, that could lead to this result.

But the real way to find out is to talk to the professor. Don't guess; ask. That's his job.

[valadil]

Inconsistently. The more people in the class, the less time the grader can spend on any one test. The more TAs, the less chance you'll have the same person grading each of your papers. Don't take it personally, just see the professor about it and move on.

Tangent time. I brought an exam to a history professor because I had a question about some of the grades in it. He went through the whole thing and provided a director's commentary on must've been going through the TA's head while it was being graded. It wasn't really a criticism either - he found one section where I drew some parallels between ancient Rome and modern (at the time) US politics and said that the TA gave me more points than I'd deserved based on the material alone, but the comparison was worth extra points. Seeing that the TA had done just that improved his opinion of that particular TA.

[warty goblin]

It's quite likely that a different person grades the homework than does exams. It's also quite likely that the standards for homework are deliberately lower, since there's bales of it to grade, it counts for approximately nothing, and in the case of group projects there's no way to tell who did how much.

It's possible you'll get points back talking to the professor, but I wouldn't hold out vast amounts of hope. Exams are usually graded pretty carefully. It's far more likely that your homework was worth less than you got (a false positive) than your exam was worth more.

[huttj509]

Coming from a physics background, something I've run into:

Homework tended to just be graded on completion, the answers. For exams, we, the TAs, were each taking a problem, with a general rubric for partial credit.

Right answer with no or indecipherable support? Most of the points.
Right answer with intermediate steps to show how the answer was arrived at? Full points.
Wrong answer with correct intermediate steps (likely just made a math error)? A lot of the points.
Wrong answer with wrong intermediate steps? Some points, because even if you were going in the wrong direction, going in A direction can still be worth something.

The all too often seen wrong answer with indecipherable equations, inconsistent formatting (the answer space should be used to lay out the answer, not as random scratch paper, don't start your calculations in the lower left then work spiraling clockwise until your muse directs you elsewhere)? 0 points. When I have 4-5 hours and hundreds of students to grade ahead of me, I can't afford too much time to decipher intent.

Although it was always fun, because the TAs would take the exam ourselves beforehand, to spot errors and unclear questions. We'd then, at the start of the exam, specifically clarify some things (problem 5, it's not moving at the start, sort of thing), as well as writing it on the board.

After about the 8th person asking about the same thing that's written up on the board, it gets old.

[Balain]

I know I can't really say much about why he marked like he did until I see him, and yes I believe the assignment was marked by the TA's and the exams by him. I do know he is very particular about his grading. Not a real complaint, I was expecting to get some lost marks, because I was never great at writing papers. Not horrid, just not great, and he said early on that he will take makes off for grammatical errors.

This is a cpsc course. The questions were on loop invariants. For the assignment I went through the his notes (he posts the lecture notes online) step by step. As far as the exam goes, to me it seems I did the same thing. There was enough room on the exam to write 3 or so paragraphs, so I wrote my assertions out on the sheet with the coded and from those wrote out the invariant on the actual space for the question.

Oh well I will find out on Wednesday…well maybe Tuesday, Monday is a holiday and Tuesday is reading week…well this semester it's a day, not sure if he will be in his office or not that day.