What are the "points" all about, and what do they mean?

What does it mean that a course isn't graded by points earned out of total points available, they are weighted?

• I am in a physics class in college. And I am trying to figure out why I have a total average percentage of 44.53% for homework but I had an 80% for my 1st homework (16/20 pts) and my second homework is claimed to be (14 out of 29 points?) Only thing is the second homework was 1 question less than the first homework...?? I have a 77% for participation... This teacher is "wow" Does anyone understand what this means? "This course isn't graded by points earned out of total points available. The grades are weighted"

• Answer:

  It means that it is irrelevant that your first homework was graded out of 20 points and your second graded out of 29. It only matters that you earned 80% of the available points for the first one and about 48% of the available points on the second. To calculate your final grade, you're going take the various grades (given as percentages) in each category and average them in the way you're used to: add them all up and divide by the total number of grades. Then you are going to multiply the average for each category by a number that corresponds to the weight for that category -- that is, how much importance is placed on each category -- and only *then* are you going to add things up. So if, for example, you end up with 80% for homework assignments, 77% for participation, 83% for tests, and 86% for the final, and if the weights for those categories are 15% for homework, 10% for participation, 50% for tests (which is more than the weight for the final even though the final is more important because there are several several test during the semester -- each individual test ends up being weighted less heavily than the final is), and 25% for the final, your grade is going to end up being: (0.15 * 80) + (0.10 * 77) + (0.50 * 83) + (0.25 * 86) (Do you see where I got those numbers? They're all up there in the last paragraph, although some of them are now "out of one" rather than "out of one hundred.") You will simplify that expression and get a numeric score which will then be converted to a letter grade. Calculating final grades by using weighted averages was the standard way of doing things when I was an undergraduate, and although it is not the only way grades are calculated today, it continues to be common enough that every student should understand how to use weighted averages to see how well they are doing in a class at various points in the semester. If I haven't explained it clearly enough, I hope you'll ask again so that someone can help you learn this. As for why you have a homework average of 44.53%, there are 3 possibilities: 1. You submitted one or more assignments late and the penalty for doing so was applied after the grade on your paper was calculated. 2. More than 2 homework assignments have been due and you're not telling us about all of them. 3. You're not calculating your homework grade "from scratch"; you're using something someone else designed, and it's not correcting for the fact that not all the assignments for the class have been submitted and graded yet. Your score on the second assignment is about 48%. If the two assignments you mention here are the only ones that have been due so far, your average percentage for homework at this point in the term is about 64% (= (80 + 48)/2).