Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mindset, Attitudes, And Success In Statistics, Matthew Isaac

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Students in many disciplines are required to take an introductory statistics course while pursuing a college education. Despite the utility of statistical methods in future research and career pursuits, many students have negative views of statistics. We are interested in how students' mindsets and attitudes towards statistics impact their performance in an undergraduate statistics course. We administered a survey to students in several undergraduate statistics courses at Utah State University. This survey included questions addressing mathematics experience, attitudes towards statistics, mindset, and course performance. We observed that the majority of students indicated the presence of a growth mindset and positive …

A Comparison Of Five Statistical Methods For Predicting Stream Temperature Across Stream Networks, Maike F. Holthuijzen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The health of freshwater aquatic systems, particularly stream networks, is mainly influenced by water temperature, which controls biological processes and influences species distributions and aquatic biodiversity. Thermal regimes of rivers are likely to change in the future, due to climate change and other anthropogenic impacts, and our ability to predict stream temperatures will be critical in understanding distribution shifts of aquatic biota. Spatial statistical network models take into account spatial relationships but have drawbacks, including high computation times and data pre-processing requirements. Machine learning techniques and generalized additive models (GAM) are promising alternatives to the SSN model. Two machine learning …

Traditional Lecture Versus An Activity Approach For Teaching Statistics: A Comparison Of Outcomes, Jennifer L. Loveland

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many educational researchers have proposed teaching statistics with less lecture and more active learning methods. However, there are only a few comparative studies that have taught one section of statistics with lectures and one section with activity-based methods; of those studies, the results are contradictory. To address the need for more research on the actual effectiveness of active learning methods in introductory statistics, this research study was undertaken.

An introductory, university level course was divided into two sections. One section was taught entirely with traditional lecture. The other section was taught using active learning methods and a minimal amount of …

Collecting, Analyzing And Interpreting Bivariate Data From Leaky Buckets: A Project-Based Learning Unit, Florence Funmilayo Obielodan

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Despite the significance and the emphasis placed on mathematics as a subject and field of study, achieving the right attitude to improve students‟ understanding and performance is still a challenge. Previous studies have shown that the problem cuts across nations around the world, both developing countries and developed alike. Teachers and educators of the subject have responsibilities to continuously develop innovative pedagogical approaches that will enhance students‟ interests and performance. Teaching approaches that emphasize real life applications of the subject have become imperative. It is believed that this will stimulate learners‟ interest in the subject as they will be able …

Statistical Characterization Of Fluvial-Deltaic Reservoirs With Archetypes, Laura L. Watkins

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Optimizing the extraction of oil and other hydrocarbon products from existing sites is important. One source of hydrocarbon products is reservoirs found within sedimentary rock formations. Understanding fluid behavior within such formations can be quite useful in optimizing oil production. Fluid behavior within sedimentary formations is influenced by the bedform structure and permeabilities within the formation. Thus, we are concerned with developing a physically and statistically valid method of characterizing sedimentary rock formations. The use of archetypal analysis to generate synthetic bedforms, as well as the use of Kriging to assign permeabilities within a bedform, was explored. With these tools, …

Simulation Of Mathematical Models In Genetic Analysis, Dinesh Govindal Patel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In recent years a new field of statistics has become of importance in many branches of experimental science. This is the Monte Carlo Method, so called because it is based on simulation of stochastic processes. By stochastic process, it is meant some possible physical process in the real world that has some random or stochastic element in its structure. This is the subject which may appropriately be called the dynamic part of statistics or the statistics of "change," in contrast with the static statistical problems which have so far been the more systematically studied. Many obvious examples of such processes …