An illustration: Student grades

As an indicator of the pattern in my mentoring of students, I have included Figure 3 below. Of the 1061 students who have remained in a class with me for at least three weeks⁴, I have advised 148 (14%) of them out of the class. Thirty-five of those 148 have returned to my course later, 29 of them passed. Through no conscious effort on my part - other than the advising of students to withdraw if they felt they could not devote the needed effort to the course - the cummulative grade distribution for students who have remained in my classes is rather close to the (pre-1960's) traditional 10% A, 20% B, 40% C, 20% D, 10% F.⁵

Figure 3: Distribution of grades for students remaining in my classes.The far right bar, W, represents students who withdrew after the third week of class.

I do not especially hold the bell curve in esteem and have frequently taught entry level courses where a distinctly bi-modal distribution of student effort and performance (split between B and D) has emerged. Nonetheless, with almost 1100 students, the distribution does indeed smooth out and peak in the middle.