Curves typically ignore outliers (because otherwise they would be useless, there’s always that one kid) so unless everyone except you is cheating you’re usually fine.
There are two cases, usually, where curves make sense.
* When the professor doesn’t actually know how hard the exam is because it’s a new test. And since people save tests that’s most classes.
* When the professor is actually trying to find that one kid. This is super common in theoretical maths. The exams are incredibly hard with the expectation that you won’t finish it and graded on a curve or some other measure like “the test is out 100 points but there are 200 possible.” But when someone gets a perfect score you direct them to the phd program.
Curves typically ignore outliers (because otherwise they would be useless, there’s always that one kid) so unless everyone except you is cheating you’re usually fine
There's a big range between "that one kid" and "everyone". In some of my courses it'd be easy to believe 15% were cheating in some way. Another comment in this thread put the share at 50%. How's a curve going to deal with that?
There are two cases, usually, where curves make sense.
* When the professor doesn’t actually know how hard the exam is because it’s a new test. And since people save tests that’s most classes.
* When the professor is actually trying to find that one kid. This is super common in theoretical maths. The exams are incredibly hard with the expectation that you won’t finish it and graded on a curve or some other measure like “the test is out 100 points but there are 200 possible.” But when someone gets a perfect score you direct them to the phd program.