Date of Award

Summer 8-11-2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mathematics and Statistics

First Advisor

Dr. Yichuan Zhao

Second Advisor

Dr. Xu Zhang

Third Advisor

Dr. Yuanhui Xiao

Abstract

Most American universities and colleges require students to provide faculty evaluation at end of each academic term, as a way of measuring faculty teaching performance. Although some analysts think that this kind of evaluation does not necessarily provide a good measurement of teaching effectiveness, there is a growing agreement in the academic world about its reliability. This study attempts to find any strong statistical evidence supporting faculty evaluation by students as a measure of faculty teaching effectiveness. Emphasis will be on analyzing relationships between instructor ratings by students and corresponding students’ grades. Various statistical methods are applied to analyze a sample of real data and derive conclusions. Methods considered include multivariate statistical analysis, principal component analysis, Pearson's correlation coefficient, Spearman's and Kendall’s rank correlation coefficients, linear and logistic regression analysis.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/2044896

Included in

Mathematics Commons

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