Report on Mathematics GPA by Course and Campus

The following chart depicts the grade point average by course and campus for the College of Micronesia-FSM system. The data comes from the Fall 2002 term only, the most recent term for which grades are available. Consider this as a system wide snapshot of mathematics across the system.

gpacims (26K)

The horizontal axis is the state and course number:
- C: Chuuk (Grey spheres)
- K: Kosrae (Green spheres)
- N: National (Orange spheres)
- P: Pohnpei (Blue spheres)
- Y: Yap (Red spheres)
- 65: MS 065 Developmental(?) Mathematics
- 90: MS 090 Conceptual Mathematics
- 95: MS 095 PreAlgebra
- 98: MS 098 Transition to Algebra
- 100: MS 100 College Algebra
- 101: MS 101 Algebra & Trigonometry
- 150: MS 150 Statistics
The vertical axis is the grade point average (mean).
The colored spheres are located at the mean grade point average.
The blue vertical line extending above and below the mean is the 95% confidence interval for the mean (average). The confidence intervals were calculated using a two-tail t-distribution. As a crude measure, where one set of blue vertical lines extends vertically past another mean, the two means are not statistically separated.
The purple vertical lines visually separate courses.

One can study the chart and make one's own inferences and conclusions. I note that National campus MS 095 is statistically significantly higher than the Nation MS 090 average, while the National MS 098 is statistically significantly lower (the upper end of the N 98 confidence interval is 2.55 while the mean for N 95 is 2.59).

I refer to this arc as the "pop-up" effect. I tend correlate this effect in my head with the hefty amount of overlap I have encountered in my MS 095 section with material already covered in MS 090. Much of MS 095 has been review of material covered in MS 090.

I can also see the concern of the MS 100 instructors written in the grade point average (or mean) for the national and Pohnpei campus MS 100 courses. Note that both are below the magic number of two, the critical value for graduation and Pell purposes.

Another feature worth noting is one I have reported on before: Chuuk campus is running on par with the national campus. If anything, Chuuk is grading tougher than the national campus. Kudos should be sent to Director Peter for what I consider a turn-around for the better. With obviously more rigid and rigorous standards in place, I am less apprehensive about students doing course work in Chuuk.

The rest of the interpretation I leave to others. All of the data is in the table below. Low refers to the low end of the confidence interval, high to the high end. The column order is dictated by the high-low graphing style in OpenOffice.org Calc.

State	Course	State Course	Low	High	Mean	Count	Stdev	Error E
C	MS 065	C 65	1.31	1.68	1.49	140	1.1	0.18
K	MS 065	K 65	2.62	3.38	3	21	0.84	0.38
P	MS 065	P 65	2.37	2.92	2.65	48	0.96	0.28
N	MS 090	N 90	1.46	2.02	1.74	89	1.34	0.28
C	MS 095	C 95	1.64	2.16	1.9	71	1.11	0.26
K	MS 095	K 95	1.57	2.76	2.17	18	1.2	0.6
N	MS 095	N 95	2.31	2.86	2.59	75	1.2	0.28
P	MS 095	P 95	0.87	1.58	1.23	40	1.1	0.35
Y	MS 095	Y 95	2.24	3.22	2.73	26	1.22	0.49
C	MS 098	C 98	1.54	2.21	1.88	24	0.8	0.34
K	MS 098	K 98	2.32	2.96	2.64	28	0.83	0.32
N	MS 098	N 98	1.93	2.55	2.24	71	1.29	0.31
P	MS 098	P 98	0.97	2.33	1.65	17	1.32	0.68
Y	MS 098	Y 98	2.09	2.57	2.33	18	0.49	0.24
C	MS 100	C 100	1.27	2.12	1.7	23	0.97	0.42
K	MS 100	K 100	1.66	2.69	2.17	23	1.19	0.52
N	MS 100	N 100	1.34	1.89	1.62	104	1.41	0.27
P	MS 100	P 100	0.85	1.68	1.27	30	1.11	0.42
Y	MS 100	Y 100	1.94	2.65	2.29	17	0.69	0.35
N	MS 101	N 101	1.32	2.68	2	23	1.57	0.68
N	MS 150	N 150	1.94	2.68	2.31	55	1.36	0.37
N	MS 110	N 110	1.67	2.59	2.13	38	1.4	0.46

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