Grading method for each question on a test:

It often turns out that all the possible answers students write down for each problem can be grouped into a handful of clusters. So, the first thing the grader does is go through all the tests and group them accordingly. Then the groups are joined together until there are as many clusters as the number of points + 1. For example, if a problem has 3 points, then the tests are stacked into 4 clusters, corresponding to 0, 1, 2, and 3 points. This is how the score for each problems is arrived at. So, you can see, that the "correctness" of an answer is contingent on how the rest of the class has answerd that question. In short, each problem is graded on a curve. The histogram of the scores for each problem is usually provided.

Are the different questions on a test measuring different things?

In order to see if the various questions are capturing different facets of your understanding, I have computed the correlation coefficient among the various questions. The lack of a high correlation between any two questions shows that they are capturing different facets of your understanding. That's one sign of a good test.

Histogram, histogram, histogram:

The number at the top-right of the test is the score on the multiple-choice part of the test. To get the overall score, add that number to all the individual scores written next to each problem. The distribution of the multiple-choice score, and each of the inidividual scores is provided, as well as the distribution of the overall score. Clearly, the distribution of the overall score is what really counts; the green line denotes the mean, and the red lines mark the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quartiles.

Final grade:

The final score (not the grade) is computed as follows:
1) Convert your total on test1 to a proportion. Same for test2 and test3.
2) Convert each hw grade to a proportion, drop the lowest one, and average the rest.
3) Same as 2, but for quizes.
4) Subsitute the above numbers in the following formula to obtain your score:
score = 0.15*hw + 0.15*qz + 0.22*test1 + 0.23*test2 + 0.25*test3
It is the location of this score on the histogram of scores which determines your final gpa-style grade in the class. That histogram is also shown on the web. The quartiles provide some sense of the final gpa-style grade, but I do not provide final grades for each of you until the end of the quarter. These histograms and their quartiles should give you some sense of where you stand currently.