Analysis of exam results of the subject ‘Applied mathematics for IT’

Abstract

In this paper the exam results of the subject “Applied Mathematics for Informatics” (formerly Methods of Operation Research) from the last 13 years have been analysed. The exam has two parts: written test and oral exam. The grades of the students of the subject have been low for a long time. We would like to know if the low grades are due to the quality of the tests or due to a reducing number of hours of contact teaching. Another reason of low grades can be due to the mathematical character of the subject and to the unpopularity of such kind of subjects. Based on the bad results, students have also initiated a change in the scoring system. This article builds on our paper at the conference ERIE 2013. The main goals of this paper are to find out if the grades have had the tendency to decline during the years and to evaluate the validity, reliability, difficulty, and discrimination power of the tests.