misbehaving the making of behavioral economics richard thaler

Striving for full disclosure, in subsequent years I included this statement in my course syllabus: “Exams will have a total of 137 points rather than the usual 100. Second, because dividing by 137 is not easy to do in your head, I figured that most students wouldn’t convert their scores into percentages. First, it produced an average well into the 90s, and some students scored above 100, generating a reaction approaching ecstasy. I chose 137 as a maximum score for two reasons. Students got only 70 percent of the answers right but the average numerical score was 96 points. This exam turned out to be harder than the first.

On the next exam, I raised the points available for a perfect score to 137. As a young professor worried about keeping my job, I wasn’t sure what to do.įinally, an idea occurred to me. They still hated my exam, and they were none too happy with me either. I told the class this, but it had no effect on the students’ mood. We employed a curve in which the average grade was a B+, and only a tiny number of students received grades below a C. What was odd about this reaction was that I had already explained that the average numerical score on the exam had absolutely no effect on the distribution of letter grades. Their principal complaint was that the average score was only 72 points out of 100. I succeeded in writing such an exam, but when the students got their results they were in an uproar. I wanted the exam to sort out the stars, the average Joes and the duds, so it had to be hard and have a wide dispersion of scores. Early in my teaching career I managed to get most of the students in my class mad at me.

Misbehaving the making of behavioral economics richard thaler