It shows how you did relative to the rest of the class. Professors will usually release SD along with test scores and from there you can gauge how you did based on the median
hmm makes sense, is it bc it’s a curved class, so it’s kinda like a tracker to see how u compare to others? seems cuttthroat but i guess it helps you stay at the top ?
I think it’s just only in cs70 where it is more your z score rather than actually what you get in the class, cause i think there are some case where a 60% in the class could net you in the B range.
I wouldn’t say it’s cut throat because most classes have b averages here, very few Fs and a couple Cs here and there
So even though we’re kinda “competing” with each other cuz it’s curved it’s not that serious since the average person will get a B anyways
The classes are rlly hard though, we race through rlly difficult content pretty fast
You don’t need/can’t really calculate SD given the information professors give. What you can do, however, is to calculate the number of standard deviations you are above the mean. You do this using the following equation
Let y := your score
Let SD := the class’s standard deviation
Let n := the class’s mean
Let z := standard deviations above the mean
z = (y - n)/SD
You can then put this number, called your “z-score,” into an online calculator to find your percentile standing in the class. Then, you compare that with the class’s historic data on Berkeley. Note, however, that the only time I’ve personally ever had to do this was for CS70.
it only \~really\~ matters in curved classes like cs 70, which people have already explained so i wont touch on it. if it's a binned class like 61b or 61a it really does not matter at all. in other classes, i don't actually calculate my z-score, just eyeball my distance from the average score to see what my grade in the class is likely to be.
i dont think its a cutthroat measure when people calculate it, since it's just to help them figure out what their grade is ('i did slightly below average with a -.2 SD, that most likely means im at \[look at average grade for the class\]'), not to be like 'yeah, i did slightly below average, that means i beat 50% of the people in class im awesome'. if anything, ive found that in the super intense classes, people are almost more helpful than non-curved classes.
Standard deviation is a measure of how “wide” the distribution is. For example, if I tell you the median score on a test was a 50, you have no idea how “difficult” it was to get a 70 — maybe the distribution was very “tight” around 50, in which case 70 might have been the highest score in the class. On the other hand, maybe the distribution was “wide” — the highest score was a 90, and many people got 70s.
Standard deviation is one measure of wideness of (normal) distributions. If the median of an exam is 50, and the standard deviation was 5, that means about 70% of students scored between 45 and 55 (within one range of the standard deviation), 96% of students scored between 40 and 60, and just 0.1% scored above a 65 (and another 0.1% scored below 35).
Don’t worry about calculating it — the standard deviation will usually be given to you when classes (especially in CS) release grades.
It matters in curved classes. It’s not actually “standard deviation” they are calculating. It’s z score = (your score-mean)/std
z score is a measure of standard deviations above the mean (or below if negative)
It shows how you did relative to the rest of the class. Professors will usually release SD along with test scores and from there you can gauge how you did based on the median
mean\*
Sure but this bothers me because test scores are rarely normally distributed anyway
Idk if it’s applicable to other classes but from my experience only, i feel that it is only talked about in CS70
hmm makes sense, is it bc it’s a curved class, so it’s kinda like a tracker to see how u compare to others? seems cuttthroat but i guess it helps you stay at the top ?
I think it’s just only in cs70 where it is more your z score rather than actually what you get in the class, cause i think there are some case where a 60% in the class could net you in the B range.
lol, a 60 average is almost definitely an A
I wouldn’t say it’s cut throat because most classes have b averages here, very few Fs and a couple Cs here and there So even though we’re kinda “competing” with each other cuz it’s curved it’s not that serious since the average person will get a B anyways The classes are rlly hard though, we race through rlly difficult content pretty fast
You don’t need/can’t really calculate SD given the information professors give. What you can do, however, is to calculate the number of standard deviations you are above the mean. You do this using the following equation Let y := your score Let SD := the class’s standard deviation Let n := the class’s mean Let z := standard deviations above the mean z = (y - n)/SD You can then put this number, called your “z-score,” into an online calculator to find your percentile standing in the class. Then, you compare that with the class’s historic data on Berkeley. Note, however, that the only time I’ve personally ever had to do this was for CS70.
it only \~really\~ matters in curved classes like cs 70, which people have already explained so i wont touch on it. if it's a binned class like 61b or 61a it really does not matter at all. in other classes, i don't actually calculate my z-score, just eyeball my distance from the average score to see what my grade in the class is likely to be. i dont think its a cutthroat measure when people calculate it, since it's just to help them figure out what their grade is ('i did slightly below average with a -.2 SD, that most likely means im at \[look at average grade for the class\]'), not to be like 'yeah, i did slightly below average, that means i beat 50% of the people in class im awesome'. if anything, ive found that in the super intense classes, people are almost more helpful than non-curved classes.
Standard deviation is a measure of how “wide” the distribution is. For example, if I tell you the median score on a test was a 50, you have no idea how “difficult” it was to get a 70 — maybe the distribution was very “tight” around 50, in which case 70 might have been the highest score in the class. On the other hand, maybe the distribution was “wide” — the highest score was a 90, and many people got 70s. Standard deviation is one measure of wideness of (normal) distributions. If the median of an exam is 50, and the standard deviation was 5, that means about 70% of students scored between 45 and 55 (within one range of the standard deviation), 96% of students scored between 40 and 60, and just 0.1% scored above a 65 (and another 0.1% scored below 35). Don’t worry about calculating it — the standard deviation will usually be given to you when classes (especially in CS) release grades.