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The Highest Grade (Posted on 2003-12-11) Difficulty: 3 of 5
I had someone tell me, after seeing what grade they got on several quizzes, that he got the highest grade (after rounding to the nearest percent) for that letter, for all 5 quizzes. Each quiz he took, he got a different letter grade on it.

When the grades are calculated for these quizzes, it is the number of questions you got right divided by the number of questions total on the quiz. Then the score is taken as a percent (the decimal is multiplied by 100) and then rounded to the nearest percent (.5 and above rounds up, below .5 rounds down)

The grading scale works so that:

100-90 A
89-80 B
79-70 C
69-60 D
0-59 F

What are the fewest number of questions possible on each quiz?

For example, if someone got 6 questions right out of 7 questions total, it would be 6/7 or about 85.7%, which rounds to 86, which isn't the highest B possible, (86 is not equal to 89) Since no number over 7 can be in the 88.5 up to 89.5 range, there couldn't have been exactly 7 questions on the quiz. There also couldn't have been 8 questions on the B quiz. 7/8 or 88 percent isn't the highest B possible; it's too low, and 8/8 or 100 percent is too high.

No Solution Yet Submitted by Gamer    
Rating: 3.4000 (5 votes)

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Solution solution | Comment 1 of 15
(1)
If the point is to minimize the number of problems (denominator) to get a particular grade:

Then:

  • a 1 question test can generate an A (1/1 = 100%) or an F (0/1 = 0%).
  • a 3 question test can generate a D (2/3 = 67%)
  • a 4 question test can generate a C (3/4 = 75%)
  • a 5 question test can generate a B (4/5 = 80%)


and we've got tests of no more than 5 problems.
________________________________

(2)
If the point is to get the highest of any given grade (100, 89, 79, 69, and 59) and minimize the number of problems on the tests then, by inspection:


  • a 1 question test can generate a 100 (1/1)
  • a 9 question test can generate a 89 (8/9)
  • a 14 question test can generate a 79 (11/14)
  • a 13 question test can generate a 69 (9/13)
  • a 17 question test can generate a 59 (10/17)


Yes, these are brute forced, but certainly a short brute force that can be done by hand (or hand held calculator).
  Posted by SilverKnight on 2003-12-11 16:13:09
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