Tutorial

How to use the Calculator:

The Grade Calculator will load once the website loads. The first three blanks are where you will submit a "grade set". My definition of a grade set for this calculator is a score, what that score was out of, and what percentage of your grade that score is. The first box is for your score. Your score will be how many points you got right on the assignment or test. The next box will be what that assignment or test was out of. An example of this would be getting 82/100 on your midterm. The 82 is your score, and the 100 is what the test was out of. The third space for the "grade set" will be for what percentage of your grade this grade set pertains to. Another example would be that is your midterm was 25% of your grade; you would enter 25 in the percentage box. Once you have all three of these fields filled in hit the submit button. The text will clear and you will be able to enter another "grade set". WARNING: Do not enter numbers greater than 1000, a negative number or a letter. If you do then the calculator will not be able to use that "grade set".

The next four boxes are used to create your curve. There is a preset curve already defined if you do not want to enter a curve. This pre-set curve is the minimum A = 90, minimum B = 80, minimum C = 70, and minimum D = 60. If you do want to replace this curve with your own then you can input what you would like to. Again make sure you don't enter numbers greater than 100 this time, no negatives and no letters. Once you have entered the numbers that you want for your curve hit submit curve. This time the numbers will not disappear. Instead they will stay there. This is done to help people see what their grades are and if they are low or high they can see if their curve was input wrong.

Once you have entered your curve or left it alone and you are done submitting your grade sets then you are ready to calculate your grade. All you need to do is hit the calculate grade button. One of two things will happen. If you input less than 100% the calculator will assume that the remaining percentage is for your final or last project. The calculator will then compare what you need with the defined curve and tell you minimum grade you need to get an A, B, C, and D. If you input the full 100% then the calculator will compare your numerical grade with the defined curve and tell you both your numerical grade and your letter grade.

After you have seen what your grades are or what you need you have the option of doing it all over again or leaving the calculator. If you want to try it over again you can either keep the same grades and put in a different curve and calculate your grades again or you can hit the clear data button. This button will clear out all your grade sets, set the curve to default, and get ride of all the messages at the bottom of the calculator Here you can do it all over again or simply go to a different web page.

I strongly advise people to use their syllabus while entering their grades and curves. This will help you with determining an accurate grade for that specific class.

Things to Look For:

· All the percentages shown when the calculator calculates what you need on your final grade are minimum's. This means that if it says you need 85.67% to get an A, your minimum grade on the final must be a 85.67 for the A. This also means anything higher than 85.67 will still give you an A.
· You can not enter 0 for what your assignment was out of. Due to the algorithms used, it will give an answer that will be unuseable.
· You can not enter letters anywhere on the calculator or it will not know what you are trying to input.
· The default curve is a straight 90%=A, 80%=B, 70%=C, and 60%=D.
· You can not enter negative values or it will either not work or come out very strange.
· Do not enter numbers greater than 1000 for your grades and no numbers higher than 100 for your curve.
· You may get a grade percentage that involves a rather long decimal. I have decided to keep this for accuracy, this is not an error. The computer may ronud the value different than the user would.

Incase of Errors:

If you start to encounter the grade calculator performing incorect calculations hit the clear data button and restart your grade calculating or refresh the web page. If the clear data button does not fix the problem and you feel that there are errors in the program and not your data, then please email me with your numbers being used and a description on what happened.