Getting the same study score

[silverpixeli]

So say we're in a subject like software development where 50% of the course is SACS (GA1 and GA2 are unit 3 and unit 4 respectively) and the other 50% (GA3) is the exam, and say there were two students in a small cohort battling for the top rank all year, and say Student A managed to secure the top rank by a fair bit in SACs and student B came second, then their ranking was the other way around in the exam (Not too different, like say Student B got ~95% on the exam and student A got ~90%) and say everyone else in the cohort scored below 90% for the exam, would Student A and Student B get the same study score? Is it more complicated than that?

I'm assuming based on explanations that I've received and given in the past that Student A would get their own exam score for the exam but student B's exam score for their SACs, and vise versa, but since SACs and Exam are worth the same, they'd both end up with the same score for the subject, but do the differing distributions come into effect? eg SACs have a much higher mean than the exam based on previous years, with something like 14% getting A+ (90%+) and on the exam, the A+ cutoff last year was just under 80% and only 8% achieved this.

So to summarise;
                    SACS      EXAM    STUDY SCORE
Student A     rank 1     ~90%           ?
Student B     rank 2     ~95%           ?

Would both get the same SS?

Thanks guys

[Professor Polonsky]

No, there's certainly no guarantee of anything of the sort. The problem with your conjecture is that it makes false assumptions about study score calculations, which were propagated by Paul's misleading FAQ. It may be a good approximation and overview of the system, but it's not really accurate for exact calculations such as this one.

The second-ranked person does not receive the second best exam score for their SAC GAs. Instead, it's some sort of interpolation between quartiles, for sufficiently large cohorts. A way to think about is to have SAC scores on the x-axis, exam scores on the y-axis and then plot the scores of the top, Q1, median, Q3, bottom person. A curve is then drawn between those point. To figure out your moderated SAC scores, you'd find your SAC scores on the x-axis, then see which moderated score it correlates to on the y-axis.

[will edit to include Mao's helpful chart]

Each GA is standardised separately. And as we've already established that SAC GAs do not necessarily corrolate to exam scores, it means that a 90/100 for SAC GAs might be better or worse than the equivalent in the exam. They have different means and standard deviations.

So the short answer is that yes, it may occur - but there's certainly no guarantee of it.

[OutstandingInDivination]

^exactly this
+10000