About Tentalabbet
Tentalabbet brings together Linköping University’s open exam statistics and course information. Explore grades and trends, compare courses, and see which programmes include a course. You can also check whether a course is offered, when it starts, and whether it has been replaced. This page explains how the information and statistics are put together.
Where do the numbers come from?
Exam results come from LiU’s open API for exam statistics (LiU Open API). It lists how many students got each grade at each exam sitting, but nothing about individual students. Course names, level, field of study, examiner and which programmes take the course come from Studieinfo:
How often is it updated?
Exam results are fetched every night and Studieinfo once a week. It can take a few weeks after an exam before the results appear in LiU’s statistics. We keep the last 5 years; older sittings are removed.
What counts as a pass?
U, F, FX and 1 count as a fail (1 is the failing grade on the 1–5 scale), every other grade as a pass. High grades are 4, 5, VG, A and B.
The main exam
A course often has several modules: exams, partial exams, labs and assignments. The figures at the top of the course page, on the programme pages and in the rankings are for the main exam, the exam module the most students have sat over the last three academic years. Full exams come before partial exams.
Ordinary exam or re-exam?
LiU’s statistics do not say which sittings are re-exams, so Tentalabbet works it out for each module. First we find the module’s usual exam periods: when in the academic year its largest sitting is usually held, and when other sittings with at least 70% as many students as that year’s largest are usually held. A time of year only becomes an exam period when it recurs in at least 2 academic years, and periods much smaller than the main one (below 50% of its size) are ignored. A sitting counts as ordinary if it is within 21 days of an exam period and has at least 50% as many students as both the largest sitting in the same period that academic year and the period’s typical size. All other sittings count as re-exams. If the module has no recurring exam period, each academic year’s largest sitting counts as ordinary.
Small sittings
Sittings with fewer than 5 students are left out of every figure, comparison, ranking and trend. They are often credit transfers, special sittings or single students, and say little about how hard a course is. You can still see them on the course page under “Show small sittings”.
The rankings
A course is included in the rankings if at least 30 students have sat the ordinary sittings of its main exam over the last three academic years. Hardest and Easiest are sorted by the pass rate on exactly those sittings. Courses whose main module has no failing grade in those years are left out, because many modules only report passing results.
“Harder than X%”
The course page may say, for example, “Harder than 70% of courses at basic level”. It means that 70% of the ranked courses at the same level have a higher pass rate on the ordinary exam. Basic-level courses are only compared with other basic-level courses, and advanced-level courses only with advanced-level courses.
Unusually easy or unusually hard
A course is flagged as unusually easy or unusually hard if the ordinary pass rate in the latest academic year differs by at least 15 percentage points from the average of the years before, with each year weighted equally. Trends and changes use only academic years whose exam periods are over, so a year in progress is not compared until its exams have been held. It needs at least two earlier years to compare with. The same difference is used in the Biggest change list.
Is the course still given?
The top of the course page says whether the course is given and when it next starts according to Studieinfo (or, if it started last term, when it last started), or whether it has been discontinued and which course replaces it. Courses with a start this term or later, or whose latest start was the term just before, count as active. Other courses, and courses that are not in Studieinfo at all, have an unknown status. Discontinued courses and courses with unknown status are hidden in the rankings, the home page highlights, search and the programme pages. “Show discontinued and unknown courses” shows them again; the choice is saved in your browser. “Harder than X%” only compares with courses that are still given.
Not an official service
Tentalabbet is not affiliated with Linköping University. It is an independent project that presents LiU’s open data in a simpler way. The numbers may contain errors, so double-check with Studieinfo or the examiner if something matters to you.
About me
I’m Axel, and I created Tentalabbet to make LiU’s open exam statistics and course information easier to explore. Feel free to get in touch with questions, feedback or corrections.