Just got my English grade back for the Speaking and Listening assessments, which is the average of 3 assessments that I have done over the past few months. It is 29, which is a B. While I am gutted with this (I wanted an A!) I also got all the grades which this number was made. Now, I am exceptionally confused here. Why is the score 29?


Lord of the Flies book analysis - 35, high A, borderline A*
Arguing to pursuade - 30, mid B
Drama; Blood Brothers - 29, B. (I jumped on a table! WHAT MORE DO YOU PEOPLE WANT!?!  Admittedly, I did forget some of it, but most people only had to learn half of it, while I had to learn the entire thing. Over the holidays. Yeah. Brilliant idea.)

Now, it's fairly obvious that the average here is NOT 29, right?

I will now use my power of vague mathematical comprehension to explain this to you. There are 4 general types of average. The mode, the median, the range and the mean. I do get that most people do know this sort of thing, but it helps emphasise the point I'm trying to make.

MODE - The easiest to work out. Simply choose the most frequently occuring number. I don't have any repeat numbers, so this won't be used.

MEDIAN - Fairly simple to work out. Put the numbers in ascending order. In this case, it's 29, 30, 35. Now choose the centre number; this is the median. So in this case, the median is 30.

RANGE - Also simple. Choose the two numbers that are the furthest away from each other. Here, it's 29 and 35. Now find out the difference between the two. That would be 6 here. Now half the difference and add it to the smaller number. So thus, 6/2 = 3 and 29+3 = 32. So the range is 32. I'd like this, as this is an A.

MODE - The hardest average to work out, but still pretty simple. First add all three number together. 29+30+35 = 94. Now divide the new number by the amount of numbers you have just added together to get the new term. Here, that is 3. So the calculation is 94/3 = 31 and a  1/3.
As the number needed is an interger, and the fraction is less than 1/2, it will be rounded down to 31. So the mean is 31.

... So why is my average 29?

EDIT: Got my full English Language score back. Originally 156, but after some harrassing, got a resit, and dragged the above average up to 33. 33-29=4. 156+4=160. To get a grade A, you need... 160. That's right, I've just scraped an A by the skin of my teeth. But an A is an A, and I've beaten the person I need to annoy, so all's well that ends well. 8D
And I've gotten a full, completed A* in Maths. Suck on that, Maths-Department-who-said-I-could-only-get-an-A!