I’ve just been playing around with the grade calculator used to decide whether we pass or fail third year medicine. It’s a complicated setup as it amalgamates the grades from all rotations and all exams and weights them appropriately.

We are graded as Meritorious (should be the top 5%), Satisfactory (the great majority ~80%), Borderline (~10%) and Unsatisfactory (>5%). We pass the year if we get satisfactory or better overall.

So I decided to input some random grades into the calculator to see what you need to be getting during the year to get what overall grade. It turns out the system uses so many roundings that it is grossly unfair. Here are two examples

Both students achieved grade S in all written and practical exams (end of year and December).

Student A 

In Course rotation grades:

Number of Merits: 0
Number of Satisfactorys: 6
Number of Borderlines: 41

Overall Grade: Satisfactory

Student B 

In Course rotation grades:

Number of Merits: 36
Number of Satisfactorys: 9
Number of Borderlines: 2

Overall Grade: Borderline

It all seems pretty shocking. I plan to confirm this by e-mail with the faculty to ensure I’m not making a mistake but if I’m right things need to be changed.

Student A – Grade Calculator (.xls)

Student B – Grade Calculator (.xls)

Thanks to my speedy new computer I’ve started using Last FM again to keep a log of what I’m listening to. I particularly like one feature of the software. It logs a track if you listen to about 50 seconds of it. It’s great for someone like me who rarely listens to a song from start to finish.

iTunes another bit of software that I like a lot doesn’t have that feature. The play count feature is wasted on me because I don’t listen to songs all the way through. My most played collection looks really odd and doesn’t represent what I listen to at all.

That’s not to say Last FM has everything right. I don’t see why the charts are calculated weekly. Surely a floating average is possible. Or even daily charts. A week is a long time in this world.

Taxis in South Shields, my hometown, are brilliant. You call one, or arrange a pickup and they arrive quickly/punctually or they will let you know otherwise. So it was quite a surprise for me when I started uni in Stockton to find that things aren’t like that everywhere.

Here taxi companies seem to regard promptness or punctuality as an afterthought. When you call any firm you will get the same answer: “Five minutes”. Predictably, they don’t all take five minutes. I’ve been known to wait over 30 minutes. When you call to ask where they are, you get “Just around the corner”. It’s frustrating. It’s also bad business.

When that happens I move on to another taxi firm in the area (of which there are many). I also moan about my experience to anyone I can get the ear of. Consequently, they may be reluctant to use that firm.

It would cost the firm nothing to be honest on the phone and tell the customer they may be 10 minutes or even that they are fully booked. I’d call them back again in the future(well, assuming they aren’t always unavailable).

I expect the reason there are so many small companies in this area because no one company has been able to develop customer loyalty sufficient to generate good word of mouth.

A hundred lost fares are better than one bad performance.

When I read about Universal Music Group suing and eBay trader I assumed I must be missing something. The gist is that a guy was selling rare promotional copies and the record company claims to own them. They argue they leant the copies to the radio stations or journalists and as a consequence he has no right to resell them. Sounds reasonable to me.

What I really don’t understand is why they care. The records are worth little to the record company. They wouldn’t care if the record was sat gathering dust in a radio station basement. Why attack someone who is supplying fans with what they want?

It could be simple greed. Perhaps they just want to ensure he doesn’t profit from their products. But that doesn’t make much sense because if that’s true they need to start suing HMV and co.

I think it’s probably due to a scared company with an overly active legal department. Baffling…