Grade Curve Calculator

In the world of education, the grading curve is widely used to give students performance insights. An examiner or teacher adjusts the students' raw scores in the grading system to get the normal distribution of scores among the students. Our Grade Curve Calculator is specially designed to automate this score distribution process based on the score.

What is Grading on a Curve?

Particularly, grading on a curve is a score-distributing process that helps to fit into the bell curve distribution. In this bell curve grading, most student scores fall around the middle range, while fewer students fall between very high and very low. This method ensures that grading reflects overall class performance rather than just individual students' scores.

Normally, a bell curve is divided into different grading categories:

• A (top performers)
• B (above average)
• C (average)
• D (below average)
• F (failures)

However, our calculator uses the concept of grading categories to automatically distribute students to these categories based on the total population, the highest score, and the lowest score on the test.

Bell Curve Grade Graph or Chart

How Does the Grade Curve Calculator Work?

The Grade Curve Calculator uses the simple but most effective and useful logic to distribute the student's score across the grading curve. Let's go through how it works step by step.

The calculator requires the following input data to calculate:

1. Total Test Population: The total number of students who took the test.
2. Highest Score: The highest score achieved by any student.
3. Lowest Score: The lowest score achieved by any student.

The following steps are involved:

• First, it calculates the score range by subtracting the lowest score from the highest score.
• Then, the population is divided into categories based on percentages:
  • 2% of the students will get an "A".
  • 14% will get a "B".
  • 68% will fall under "C".
  • 14% will receive a "D".
  • 2% will receive an "F".

Grade Breakdown by Category:

• Grade A: Top 2% of students.
• Grade B: Next 14% of students.
• Grade C: Middle 68% of students.
• Grade D: Below-average students (14%).
• Grade F: The bottom 2% of students.

Step-by-Step Example:

Suppose you are a teacher of a school, and you're grading a physics test for your class of 100 students. The highest score is 50, and the lowest is 10. Let's compute those values:

• Total Test Population: 100 students
• Highest Score: 50
• Lowest Score: 10

Using the Grade Curve Calculator, here's how the students are distributed:

1. Grade A: 2 students (scores between 50 to 49.2)
2. Grade B: 14 students (scores between 49.2 to 43.6)
3. Grade C: 68 students (scores between 43.6 to 16.4)
4. Grade D: 14 students (scores between 16.4 to 10.8)
5. Grade F: 2 students (scores between 10.8 to 10)