General Expectations
If an activity worksheet has been provided, then you need to submit that document, along with any other analyses, plots, or calculations you made to arrive at the answers in your worksheet. I should be able to follow your calculations so that I can provide feedback if you have made a mistake. Responses to follow-up questions should be in complete sentences and demonstrate your ability to interpret the results of the analysis.
If you are submitting a scanned hand-drawn plot, chart, or drawing as part of a data analysis activity, then please double check to make sure everything on the electronic version of it is legible. See below for more details.
Grading Rubric
All assignments are graded on a 100 point scale regardless of length or difficulty, for simplicity. Unless otherwise indicated, all questions in an assignment are given equal weight. My grading procedure is as follows:
- Fully correct responses receive full credit
- Blank responses receive no credit.
- Assigning partial credit for partially correct responses is always a subjective process, but I try my best to be consistent.
- In the case of a partially correct calculation, I follow along with the work you’ve shown in order to figure out where your error is. If you don’t show your work, then I can’t give as much partial credit.
- In the case of partially correct responses to open-ended discussion questions, I try to assign partial credit based on how close you were to the thoroughly correct answer that I was aiming for. Please proofread all answers to discussion questions so that you can make sure your answers make grammatical and logical sense. I can’t give as much partial credit if I can’t figure out what you are trying to say!
- In the case of a partially correct plot or graph, I assign partial credit based on the number of correct elements including data points, labels on axes, legends, and general legibility
- In the case where an error you have made early on in a problem set affects later answers, I tend to deduct points only for the initial mistake. This underscores the importance of showing your work, since it aids me in finding the original source of your error, tracking it through your later calculations, and protecting you from losing points more than once because of a single error.
My numerical grading scale (i.e. what range of scores equals an “A” or a “B”, etc.) can be found on the syllabus.