How Group Activity Drops Work:
  1. A stab at describing how group activity drops work: My grading computer program always drops the 7 lowest activities after 8 non-special-dropped activities have accumulated and the lowest dropped ones are marked by a minus sign, except dropped 0's are turned into -201's since -0 is the same to integer arithmetic as 0, but since activities are only 0 or 1, the lowest ones that arn't turned into -201's are turned into -1's which disappear once seven or more real zeros have accumulated of which the first 7 zeros are turned into -201's and the others stay 0's, and the dropped activities (non-special and special) are dropped from the numerator and the denominator that calculates the average, and furthermore special drops are -202's which don't count toward the 7 drops, but I allow at most 5 special drops and if more are needed and the activity item hurts the student's grade, then I just drop the whole activity item so that it doesn't count either way and this is done by turning all grades into -202's which is klutzy, I know, but there is still an average on the activity item line, but it isn't for the activity item, it's just the cumulative average shown as a placeholder.
  2. A formula way at describing how group activity drops are done: 
      T = number of activity points:  i.e., count of 1's
  A = number of activities:  All that actually occurred in class.
  d = number of drops which is always 7
  s = number of special drops which always < = 5

  Activity Average = ( T - d - s )/(A - d - s) for A - s > = 8
                   = ( T - s )/(A - s)         for A - s < = 7
                   = not counted               for A - d - s = 0
                                               but the activity line
                                               shows the cumulative average
                                               as a placeholder.
                   = 0 but counted             the activity line
                                               shows the cumulative average
                                               as a placeholder which is 
                                               klutzy, but for some historical
                                               reason that's what happens.
  3. File: Astint file: ast00_gen03.html.