When "Hide totals if they contain hidden items" is set to "Show totals excluding hidden items" in course grade settings, the course totals in the User report as viewed from the student's perspective are different than the same report when viewed by the instructor. They should be the same.

To replicate:

1. Create a course, enroll a user as a student
2. In the gradebook, create a couple of categories. Parent and sub categories should be set to Natural aggregation
3. Create a couple of items under each category (I manually created the items)
4. Insure there are checkmarks for each category in the Weights column
5. In the Grader report, grade at one item in each category
6. Under Setup > Course grade settings, set "Hide totals if they contain hidden items" to "Show totals including hidden items".
7. In Setup > Categories and items, hide one of the grade items.
8. Review the User report for the enrolled student. In another browser login as the enrolled student and view the User report from the student's perspective. The Course totals match.
9. Now go back to course grade settings and set "Hide totals if they contain hidden items" to "Show totals excluding hidden items".
10. Review the user report for the enrolled student. The course totals now are different than when viewed from the instructor's User report.

I believe the course totals as viewed by the instructor are the correct ones. These same totals should be reflected in the student's view.