Buddastotle: jhan is correct in that McMaster doesn't "Bell-curve." However, in some cases professors do uniformly translate grades upwards using a method known as the Mobius Transform (it's available on Wikipedia if you'd like to read up on it). The math is more complicated than a bell-curve, but it translates everyone up, meaning no one's mark ever drops because they did too well (See below).

But this varies by course and by faculty. However it may be of some comfort to know that if a prof ever messes up their tests and makes them impossibly hard, there are ways to correct that oversight.

Originally Posted by jhan523

The problems I see with the bell curve is that it doesn't show how much information a student has learned, rewards the smartest in the class and penalizes the less intelligent. No to mention that if everyone is doing well, some of them will have their grades lowered, which completely sucks.

The literal bell-curve (the one that makes the class scores look like a normal distribution) actually penalizes those who do well, and rewards those who do poorly. The better you've done, the less you get shifted up, until a point where your mark literally drops because you "found the test too easy."

This method is BS for obvious reasons, but it exists in certain situations. I believe high school IB courses operate on a bell curve, because the scores are standardized across the province (or perhaps across the school-board).

Originally Posted by jhan523

Bell curving doesn't exist in any universities in Canada (at least to my knowledge). Bell curving doesn't even make sense in my opinion.

Lol, protas posted the formula he used to Bell Curve Math 2ZZ3 last year :p

Co-op placements mainly..

Originally Posted by Mowicz

Buddastotle: jhan is correct in that McMaster doesn't "Bell-curve." However, in some cases professors do uniformly translate grades upwards using a method known as the Mobius Transform (it's available on Wikipedia if you'd like to read up on it). The math is more complicated than a bell-curve, but it translates everyone up, meaning no one's mark ever drops because they did too well (See below).

But this varies by course and by faculty. However it may be of some comfort to know that if a prof ever messes up their tests and makes them impossibly hard, there are ways to correct that oversight.



The literal bell-curve (the one that makes the class scores look like a normal distribution) actually penalizes those who do well, and rewards those who do poorly. The better you've done, the less you get shifted up, until a point where your mark literally drops because you "found the test too easy."

This method is BS for obvious reasons, but it exists in certain situations. I believe high school IB courses operate on a bell curve, because the scores are standardized across the province (or perhaps across the school-board).

I realised what I said isn't necessarily true, but isn't the true bell curve when the professor decides the grade curve? Like 1% will get 12s, 5% will get 11s, 10% will get 10s, etc...

Originally Posted by jhan523

I realised what I said isn't necessarily true, but isn't the true bell curve when the professor decides the grade curve? Like 1% will get 12s, 5% will get 11s, 10% will get 10s, etc...

As I described in the second half, the literal "bell curve" makes the class scores look like a normal distribution (a "bell" shaped curve). The characterizing feature of such curves is that their mean, median and mode are all equal, like this:



This particular picture is for IQ, but the numbers that will differ on any "test" score is the x-axis. 100 will correspond to the mean (ideally what, 70% is what profs want?), and then the other numbers will correspond to adding/subtracting "standard deviations" from the mean. This is technical jargon, but a standard deviation is basically, the average amount that the students differ from the mean. So what profs who are "bell-curving" will do, is two steps:

1) Transform the marks so that the standard deviation is an appropriate number (in most courses, this is likely 10%), by horizontally compressing the scores. This makes the curve "bell-shaped." This will often-times lower grades that are very very high and raise scores that are very low (they both get "squished" towards the average value, near the middle).

2) If the mean/median/mode is inappropriate (ie. if your class had a failing average), then they will add/subtract a certain number of points from every score. This amounts to parallel-translating the entire curve to the left or right, so that the high point lies over the mean that they want.

It's not always possible to make the scores a perfect bell (sometimes there are occasions where it's a "reverse" normal distribution, where lots of people do extremely well, lots do extremely poorly, and only a few do "ok"), but this method attempts to make it as normalized as possible. But as I mentioned, this is not what profs do at Mac (at least not in any course I've ever taken/TA'd), as from what I understand, Mac has a strict policy against lowering students' grades.


Does that make sense?

EDIT: Let me give an example.

Suppose a prof wants a mean/median/mode of 70%, and a standard deviation of 10%. This means that after bell-curving as I've described above, 68% of the class will score between 60% and 80%, while 95% of the class will score between 50% and 90%.

I believe this is roughly what professors want.

To all first years: Do not play video games!!! Study! leave one part of the game system at home so that it won't work. cancel xbox live for the year, etc. it's not worth your education if you have an exam but decide to play halo instead. I've seen this happen to people.

Actually I realized last night that I did encounter a prof who used pretty much the technique I posted below.

However, the difference is that the prof took the Maximum of either the original score, or their transformed bell score...meaning if someone had say a 94% in the course, and after bell-curving fell to 88%, the prof would assign a 94% in the course. Likewise someone who had a 45% and got curved up to 56%, the prof would give them 56%.

The final score distribution doesn't represent a "bell" per se, but it accomplishes the same goals of bell-curving without the negative side effects.

To reply to the statement that Canadian Uni's don't bell curve ... Schulich does ...

oh ya, lastly, truthfully and reasonably, how hard is it to get a 10, 11 or 12?? :|

Originally Posted by Buddastotle

oh ya, lastly, truthfully and reasonably, how hard is it to get a 10, 11 or 12?? :|

I think it truly depends. There's too much at play to predict that for any student. I finished first year and I'm still nervous about second year courses being harder and what not. There things like, do you like the class, how hard the test were that time around, how the professors taught and your talent in that subject area.

My best answer is you'll find out.

Hi, couple questions:

1. My sister's high school friend went to Mac for Life Science (she was 2nd year this year), and she recently transferred to Western based on the complaint that Mac's curriculum and course material was very unorganized and poor. Firstly, was that a valid complaint or was that blown out of proportion, and secondly if that claim is true, are the other faculties "unorganized" like that such as engineering?

2. I've heard mixed things about co-op here at Mac. It's mostly on your own for a job placement, correct? Does that mean its purely based on your initiative to find a job (therefore its a bummer for lazy people)? Or is it difficult to get a placement? [co-op specifically relating to engineering]

3. How multicultural is Mac?

Thank you!

Originally Posted by herBs

Co-op placements mainly..

I still have this question

Originally Posted by adaptation

Hi, couple questions:

1. My sister's high school friend went to Mac for Life Science (she was 2nd year this year), and she recently transferred to Western based on the complaint that Mac's curriculum and course material was very unorganized and poor. Firstly, was that a valid complaint or was that blown out of proportion, and secondly if that claim is true, are the other faculties "unorganized" like that such as engineering?

2. I've heard mixed things about co-op here at Mac. It's mostly on your own for a job placement, correct? Does that mean its purely based on your initiative to find a job (therefore its a bummer for lazy people)? Or is it difficult to get a placement? [co-op specifically relating to engineering]

3. How multicultural is Mac?

Thank you!

Okay your questions are evoking me to answer them so i'll try my best.

1. I cannot speak for Western but Mac's curriculums for the most part not unorganized (double negative there) they are very structured. The possible reason why your friend might have had a hard time could have been because the course was undergoing a change (Mac is fairly progressive in terms of how committed they are to changing course structure - we fill out course evals every year) It makes no sense for a course to stay the same for years without reformatting. Either that or your friend was just unorganized (just sayin)

2. IMO, Co-op SHOULD NOT find a job for you, this I believe is setting people up for laziness. What people learn from going to interviews and searching processes is just as valuable than the job itself. That's one thing that I believe in. Plus the co-op people aren't that cold, they'll help you out for sure, they just won't baby you into a co-op position, you must build your resume and go in an interview like a big person

3. Yes Mac is multicultural but don't expect to be immersed in it. People generally tend to stick to their own, it's sort of a comfort thing. but I sort if think people need to get out of their comfort zone more. Hm. yea

Originally Posted by Buddastotle

is there bell curving at mac?

in computer science there is definitely bell curving. it depends on the program and professor.

Originally Posted by adaptation

Hi, couple questions:

1. My sister's high school friend went to Mac for Life Science (she was 2nd year this year), and she recently transferred to Western based on the complaint that Mac's curriculum and course material was very unorganized and poor. Firstly, was that a valid complaint or was that blown out of proportion, and secondly if that claim is true, are the other faculties "unorganized" like that such as engineering?

2. I've heard mixed things about co-op here at Mac. It's mostly on your own for a job placement, correct? Does that mean its purely based on your initiative to find a job (therefore its a bummer for lazy people)? Or is it difficult to get a placement? [co-op specifically relating to engineering]

3. How multicultural is Mac?

Thank you!

1) She switched to Western because she was having issues with the curriculum? I honesty don't understand when people do stuff like that. Every school has issues with their curriculum. At Mac we fill our course evaluations so the course can be restructured if it ever comes to that point, so student feedback is taken into consideration. Unless your friend meant MUGSI/SOLAR by "curriculum", which is still difficult to understand because a lot of schools have issues with their technology, not just us.

3) We're decently multicultural. People say the school is clique-y, but not any more so than other schools. There are loads of culture clubs that you can join, so if that's what you're worried about, don't sweat it