The third class test happened yesterday. The overall average among those who took the test was 86% (B), up an astounding 9% from Class Test 2. But best is the distribution. The numbers of A’s and A-‘s doubled for the second time in a row, and now we’ve lost the miserable right-ward skew we had for Class Test 1, and the worrying W-shape of Class Test 2, and instead grown a very lovely left-ward skew. If we can further shrink the size of the right hand tail, it will start to look like last year’s final grade distribution.

I am hugely pleased. Like a physician taking credit for his patient getting better, I give my full credit to my teaching. Outstanding job Andrew. More realistically, I hope this is because many students did seize control of their own learning. One can but hope.

For the record, the actual numbers: A, 56; A- 86, B+, 52; B, 36; B-, 20; C+, 26; C, 15; D, 20: Fails, 8, and no-shows 21. Of the A’s, 24 got 100% on my ask-28-grade-out-of-25 algorithm. No one got everything right (except one student who saw the answers before I caught the computer glitch – at 4am). Four students got only two of the 28 questions wrong.

The no-shows are something of a mystery. Only three of them are people who have obviously given up the class. Many of them desperately need to improve their scores. I wonder what is going on?