I took that exam as well, and it is one of the worst academic situations I've ever experienced. I have no idea what Stojanovic was thinking. They were too lazy to make a real final, so they made it multiple choice, and since they wanted to have multiple correct answers per question, they had to add a penalty for guessing.

Multiple choice is already a poor representation of understanding, since it increases variance due to miscalculation and correct guessing and eliminates the possibility of demonstrating partial understanding apart from "got the exact answer." When you add in the fact that mistakes or a lack of complete understanding in one area will cancel out areas that you understood perfectly, the score becomes highly nonrepresentative of your understanding of the material. From my observations, I believe that the mean score was likely below zero. That means that on average, students would have been better off if they didn't bother studying and just the test in blank.

As far as grades go there is a heavy curve applied and according to the TA it is such that there are no negative curved graves (your curved grade is on blackboard). My guess is that Stojanovic knows the scores on this test are not very meaningful, and that she will not count it very seriously when determining semester grades. At least, I hope that is the case. I won't complain if my semester grade is okay, but ultimately I'd still be very disappointed that I wasted my time studying for a final like that when I had other real exams coming up.