So I just random clicked through a straighterline final.

[cookderosa]

How are you able to figure out the weight of your final?

as med stated, it's in the syllabus.

You need to calculate your score going into the final to see if you can get a zero and still pass.

Here's a sample of what a class might be:

Homework: 50%
Quizzes: 25%
Final: 25%

So, your final is 25% but everything else up to that point is equal to 75%. Without being mathy, you just take your total class points (say it is 1000 possible) and your homework is 50% so it was worth a total of 500 points. Now figure out how many total points you earned - let's say you earned 450 points so far for homework. Then, for your quizzes, that's worth 25% (250 points) so add up how many points you have so far in quizzes, let's say you have 210.

You earned 500 for homework + 210 for quizzes = 710 points. Your points are 710 divided by 1000 or 71% right now going into the final. If you only need 70% to pass, you have already passed, and can score a zero on the final because you are already at 71%.

Let's say you needed 80% to pass, then you DO need to take your final. In this scenario, you need to earn at least 800 points total, and you have 710, so you must earn 90 more points. This will get mathy to calculate how many questions you'll need correct (depends on how many questions on the test) but if the final is worth 25% it's also worth 250 points, so you only need to get about a third of the questions right to reach the 80% threshold for the course.

Without a doubt, algebra people will say "why did you put that into points first you can just find the variable of blah blah?" and the answer is because I learned to do this before learning algebra, so I put everything into points and then back it out to figure out the number I need. It might be longer, but I think it's easier. Do whichever works best for you.