Related papers: Academic Miscommunication in Physics
Mixed linear regression is a well-studied problem in parametric statistics and machine learning. Given a set of samples, tuples of covariates and labels, the task of mixed linear regression is to find a small list of linear relationships…
This work reports on results from the first national study of the impact of student facilitation of informal physics outreach programs on their physics identity, sense of belonging, and essential career skill development. Drawing on results…
This work aims to understand how effective the typical admissions criteria used in physics are at identifying students who will complete the PhD. Through a multivariate statistical analysis of a sample that includes roughly one in eight…
Historically, physics has been a predominantly male field, with previous literature showing there is little diversity amongst U.S. physics students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Recent research indicates that the lack of…
We present a theory for the previously unexplained divergent behavior noticed in the training of large language models. We argue that the phenomenon is an artifact of the dominant optimization algorithm used for training, called Adam. We…
While many previous studies have indicated that encouraging a growth mindset can improve student learning outcomes, this conclusion's applicability to college-level astronomy classrooms remains poorly understood owing to the variation in…
We investigate student comfort with the material in an upper-division spins-first quantum mechanics course. Pre-lecture surveys probing students' comfort were administered weekly, in which students assigned themselves a "discomfort level"…
Instructors and researchers think "thinking like a physicist" is important for students' professional development. However, precise definitions and observational markers remain elusive. We reinterpret popular beliefs inventories in physics…
How students use mathematics in their physics classes has been studied extensively in the physics education literature. In addition to specific mathematical methods in specific physics contexts, possible effects of more general "cultural"…
A recent paper by Salehi et al. claims that the differences found between major demographic groups on scores in introductory college physics tests are due to differences in pre-college preparation. No evidence is produced, however, to show…
A basic issue in both teaching of and practice of statistics is the interplay between modelling assumptions and inference performance. The general message conveyed is that stronger assumptions lead to better statistical performance of the…
Acquiring the mathematical, conceptual, and problem-solving skills required in university-level physics courses is hard work, and the average student often lacks the knowledge and study skills they need to succeed in the introductory…
In previous work we analyzed databases for 95 classes to show that the percent grade scale was correlated with a much higher student fail rate than the 4.0 grade scale. This paper builds on this work and investigates equity gaps occurring…
Student attitudes and approaches to problem solving can impact how well they learn physics. Prior research in the US using a validated Attitude and Approaches to Problem Solving (AAPS) survey suggests that there are major differences…
Analyzing students' written solutions to physics questions is a major area in PER. However, gauging student understanding in college courses is bottlenecked by large class sizes, which limits assessments to a multiple-choice (MC) format for…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
Identifying the optimal diagnostic test and hardware system instance to infer reliability characteristics using field data is challenging, especially when constrained by fixed budgets and minimal maintenance cycles. Active Learning (AL) has…
The objective of this project is to compare the effectiveness of teaching styles used in high school physics classes and the methods used to assess them. We would like to determine those approaches to physics at the high schools that work…
Frame prediction based on AutoEncoder plays a significant role in unsupervised video anomaly detection. Ideally, the models trained on the normal data could generate larger prediction errors of anomalies. However, the correlation between…
Anomalous Microwave Emission (AME) is an important emission component between 10 and 60 GHz that is not yet fully understood. It seems to be ubiquituous in our Galaxy and is observed at a broad range of angular scales. Here we use the new…