Moseley replies to Mitschele.
In response to notes by J. E. Billo (1) and by me
(2) presenting ways to drop the two lowest quiz grades
from a list in computing student quiz totals, Mitschele
has suggested that there is a simpler method than
presented in these notes. His comments are basically correct,
and I should have probably mentioned this approach in
my note; however, my goal (which was not stated as
clearly as it should have been) was to develop a procedure
which would give both a correct running quiz total at any
time during the quarter for any number of quizzes taken
(up to seven) and also the total of the best five quiz
grades for the overall quiz score. This requires that the
procedure total the quiz grades for the first five quizzes
taken, drop the one lowest grade for six quizzes taken, and
drop the two lowest grades for seven quizzes taken. My
procedure has the flexibility to follow these steps, but if
I understand Mitschele's procedure correctly, his does not.
Mitschele's procedure could be easily modified
with two IF functions to allow it to calculate the correct
quiz total when fewer than the maximum number of
quizzes has been taken. Assume that the seven quiz grades
for
a student are entered in cells C2 to I2 and that a
blank cell (Z2) is available. The two IF functions below
would allow his procedure both to give the correct running
quiz total for any number of quizzes taken (up to the
seven) and to total the best five quiz grades for the
overall quiz score:
For the QuizT Cell:
=IF(COUNT(C2:I2)=7,SUM(C2:I2) SMALL(C2:I2,1)
SMALL(C2:I2,2)Z2)
For the Z2 Cell:
=IF(COUNT(C2:I2)=6,SUM(C2:I2) SMALL(C2:I2,1),SUM(C2:I2)
With this addition, Mitschele's procedure is as
flexible as the one I proposed and is somewhat simpler
to set up and modify for the various numbers of
quizzes given and/or dropped in different courses.
Literature Cited
1. Billo, E.; Joseph, J. J. Chem.
Educ. 1993, 70, 148.
2. Moseley, C. G. J. Chem.
Educ. 1996, 73, 62.
|
Citation
Always in the