[pacaro]

If my memory and understanding are correct, the way that Mathematics is graded at Cambridge is interesting here.

Questions are scored alpha for a completely correct solution, beta if the examinee demonstrated that they knew what they were doing by maybe made some small mistake, and gamma for a reasonable effort.

The bare minimum pass mark is one alpha.

[digikata]

That sounds very interesting, but I'm curious about the pass mark criteria. Is there some larger number of beta and gamma that can also pass? Otherwise, it seems like generating Beta and gamma scoring gives some nice measures for use by the teachers/students, but if ultimately passing only relies on alpha, it's a lot like any other math scoring.

It becomes a little like companies saying they value x & y, but take action only aligned to z.

[pacaro]

Each problem in the exam is worth some number of points (20), I think that the aim is to ensure that you can't pass by mediocre performance across many problems, that a bare pass indicates that you have retained enough knowledge/ability to get basically correct answers on two problems.

Explicitly the aim is to eliminate students who haven't deeply understood some aspect of the curriculum, so accumulating lots of partial results is exactly what they don't want.

It's worth noting that out-right failure is extremely rare and subject to an appeals process etc. Partly this is because this is a set of exams at the end of each year of instruction with no mechanism for a re-sit, so a student who fails will not graduate (the system isn't totally barbaric, there are mechanisms in place to handle health related concerns etc.).

[grenoire]

Cambridge the city or the university?

[pacaro]

The university.

I looked up details, they can be found at https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/schedules.pdf

My memory is a little off. There is no gamma. And the pass is (in the first year) is 2alpha * beta