[944] A small complaint on the grading policy

[Ze Yang]

Hello Professor,


I just saw the final grades released, and I have a small complaint about
the grading policy you’ve adopted.


After some calculation using the formula A = 0.8E + 0.2min(H,E); E = (3M +
5F)/8, I figured out that one can never get an A+ if he/she did the last
question in the midterm wrong, even though he/she get 100% in HW and final.


This hardly seems fair to me:


1) The final grade of this course should not be contingent upon one single
question.

2) The last question in the midterm is easy after we learned the product
rule, which we had not at that time.

3) Many of our classmates (including me) are still confused about why the
“common mistakes answers” for that question is wrong. You claimed that the
function [image: f(t,W_t)=e^{-\lambda W_t}\int_0^t e^{\lambda W_s} dW_s] is
not differentiable in time, but no further discussion. In fact, in my
opinion, we can not adopt Ito's lemma here simply because [image:
f(t,x)=e^{-\lambda x}\int_0^t e^{\lambda W_s}dW_s] is not a deterministic
function in t and x.


I would appreciate it if you could reconsider the grading policy to taking
the issue I’ve mentioned into account. Otherwise if you don't accept my
point, I hope you can give some detailed explanation on the last question
in midterm. Thank you very much, and have a wonderful holiday!


Best regards,

Ze Yang
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