Education: Insights from data

INSIGHTS FROM DATA

DETECT ANOMALIES

Richard QuinnStrategic Management, UCF

“The exam was running at a grade and a half higher than it had ever run before... You don’t see that kind of grade improvement by chance.”

Series1

Series1

Summer2010

Mid-term

Fall2010

Mid-term

“A bimodal distribution exists when an external force is applied to the dataset that creates a systematic bias.”

SEE THE REAL IMPACT OF POLICY

ENGLISH

0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54 57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78 81 84 87 90 93 96 990

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54 57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78 81 84 87 90 93 96 990

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

SOCIAL SCIENCE

0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54 57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78 81 84 87 90 93 96 990

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

LANGUAGE

0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54 57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78 81 84 87 90 93 96 990

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

SCIENCE

0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54 57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78 81 84 87 90 93 96 990

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

MATHEMATICS

1 5.5%2 4.3%3 2.3%4 0.9%5 0.3%6 0.1%

MATHEMATICS 3.08%COMMERCE 0.80%ACCOUNTANCY 0.33%PHYSICS 0.26%ECONOMICS 0.21%HISTORY 0.19%

How many subjects do students fail in?What contributes to single failures?

PHYSICS MATHEMATICS 0.79%PHYSICS CHEMISTRY 0.77%CHEMISTRY MATHEMATICS 0.55%COMMERCE ACCOUNTANCY 0.29%ENGLISH COMMERCE 0.17%BIOLOGY MATHEMATICS 0.14%

Two-subject failures

WHAT DETERMINES PERFORMANCE?

Subject Girs higher by Girls BoysPhysics 0 119 119Chemistry 1 123 122English 4 130 126Computers 6 137 131Biology 6 129 123Mathematics 11 123 112Language 11 152 141Accounting 12 138 126Commerce 13 127 114Economics 16 142 126

PERFORMANCE: GIRLS VS BOYS

Based on the results of the 20 lakh students taking the Class XII exams at Tamil Nadu over the last 3 years, it appears that the month you were born in can make a difference of as much as 120 marks out of 1,200.

June borns score the

lowest

The marks shoot up for Aug borns

… and peaks for Sep-borns

120 marks out of 1200

explainable by month of birth

An identical pattern was observed in 2009 and 2010…

… and across districts, gender, subjects, and class X & XII.

“It’s simply that in Canada the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn’t turn ten until the end of the year—and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.”

-- Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

BIG DATA REQUIRES RICHER VISUALS

MONITORING

EFFECTIVELY

MONITORING

EFFECTIVELY

Jain

Harini

Shweta

Sneha Pooja

Ashwin

Shah

Deepti

Sanjana

Varshini

Ezhumalai

Venkatesan

Silambarasan

Pandiyan

Kumaresan

Manikandan

Thirupathi

Agarwal

Kumar

Priya

FIND HIDDEN CORRELATIONS

COMPARING PERFORMANCE

EMBRACE AND LEARN FROM DATA

USE IT TO DRIVE YOUR DECISIONS