How to Compute your Id

To see your grades on this website (grades for Homework 1 and Quiz 1 were published a few minutes ago), you first need to calculate the id I'm using to represent you. To do this, start with your student id, take out the hyphens and finally write down the last five digits of the resulting number. If the first digit of the resulting number is zero, drop it.

Example 1: Assume your student number is 555-65-4321. After following the instructions above, you would be left with the number 54321.

Example 2: Assume your student number is 555-60-1234. After following the instructions above, you would be left with the number 1234.

Now, take your last name, make it lower case, and cycle through its characters. Assume that 'a' is mapped to 1, 'b' to 2, ..., and 'z' is mapped to 26. For this class, there are two special characters. A space character maps to -64 and a hyphen maps to -51. Map each character in your last name to its value and add up all the values to calculate a sum. Add this sum to the number above to calculate your id.

Example 1: Assume your student number is 555-65-4321 and your last name is "Palen-Anderson". You would convert that to "palen-anderson" and start a running total: 16 + 1 + 12 + 5 + 14 - 51 + 1 + 14 + 4 + 5 + 18 + 19 + 15 + 14 = 87. Add 87 to 54321 to arrive at your final id: 54408.

Example 2: Assume your student number is 555-60-1234 and your last name is "Palen Anderson". You would convert that to "palen anderson" and start a running total: 16 + 1 + 12 + 5 + 14 - 64 + 1 + 14 + 4 + 5 + 18 + 19 + 15 + 14 = 74. Add 74 to 1234 to arrive at your final id: 1308

Note: In some cases, I have removed spaces from last names. If your name is similar to "Al Sawan" or "Mc Cleaveland", I have likely condensed your name to "AlSawan" or "McCleaveland" in my roster. If you think I did that with your name, then remove the space and do the calculation above to see if the new id appears on the lists that appear on the Grades page.

If you have a question about what last name I used for you, please let me know!


© Ken Anderson 2012