{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"What Is Best for Students, Numerical Scores or Letter Grades?","authors":[{"name":"Evi Micha","slug":"evi-micha","given":"Evi","family":"Micha","affiliation":"Department of Computer Science , University of Toronto"},{"name":"Shreyas Sekar","slug":"shreyas-sekar","given":"Shreyas","family":"Sekar","affiliation":"Rotman School of Management , University of Toronto; Department of Management , University of Toronto Scarborough"},{"name":"Nisarg Shah","slug":"nisarg-shah","given":"Nisarg","family":"Shah","affiliation":"Department of Computer Science , University of Toronto"}],"abstract":"We study letter grading schemes, which are routinely employed for evaluating student performance. Typically, a numerical score obtained via one or more evaluations is converted into a letter grade (e.g., A+, B-, etc.) by associating a disjoint interval of numerical scores to each letter grade. \r\n\r\nWe propose the first model for studying the (de)motivational effects of such grading on the students and, consequently, on their performance in future evaluations. We use the model to compare uniform letter grading schemes, in which the range of scores is divided into equal-length parts that are mapped to the letter grades, to numerical scoring, in which the score is not converted to any letter grade (equivalently, every score is its own letter grade).  \r\n\r\nTheoretically, we identify realistic conditions under which numerical scoring is better than any uniform letter grading scheme. Our experiments confirm that this holds under even weaker conditions, but also find cases where the converse occurs.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2024/327","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/327","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/0327.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/327.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/bibtex/327","volume":{"slug":"2024","title":"Proceedings of the Thirty-Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2024","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/","year":2024,"location":"Jeju, Korea","dates":"3-9 August 2024","editors":"Kate Larson","isbn":"978-1-956792-04-1","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2024"},"section":"Game Theory and Economic Paradigms","track":"Main Track","number":327,"pages":{"first":2949,"last":2957},"keywords":["Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: GTEP: Computational social choice"],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"[Baumeister et al., 2001] Roy F. 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