United States

We encounter variables with little variation often in PER due to the demographics of physics and the questions we ask. For example, in course completion studies, most students will earn high enough grades to pass the course. Yet, little work has examined how to analyze such data. Therefore, we conducted a simulation study using logistic regression, penalized regression, and random forest. We systematically varied the fraction of positive outcomes, feature imbalances, and odds ratios. We find the algorithms treat features with the same odds ratios differently based on their imbalance and the outcome imbalance. While none of the algorithms solved the problem, some reduced the scale of the problem. Our results suggest that PER studies may contain false negatives when determining which variables are related to an outcome. We propose recommendations for researchers and then illustrate these by predicting which applicants will be admitted to a graduate physics program.

AAPT WM 21

Addressing Rare Outcomes in PER Quantitative Studies

graduate admissions

student outcomes

data imbalance

machine learning

AAPT® is a strong professional physics science society dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in physical science education.

Winter and Summer National Meetings:
These National Meetings, held each winter and summer, are opportunities for members, colleagues, and future physicists from around the world to:

- participate in physics workshops
- meet and greet other physics educators
- form networks nationally and locally
- engage exhibitors and learn about the latest physics resources
- discuss innovations in teaching methods
- share the results of research about teaching and learning.

If you're not able to log in, you're most likely using **incorrect login credentials**. Double-check that you are using the same email and password that you used to register for the conference, submit your abstract or access your AAPT membership. There may also be **an issue with your AAPT meeting registration**. Please email aapt2021@underline.io and programs@aapt.org and we will work quickly to resolve this issue.

poster

Often the skills required to use the Unix/Linux command line are perceived as old-fashioned, difficult to learn, and unnecessary. However, the Linux command line is an extraordinarily flexible environment for programming, data reduction and analysis, simulation, and visualization, and is thus in wide use throughout the physics research community and beyond. These skills are surprisingly accessible to students. In this talk, I will argue that the command-line environment is a pedagogically beneficial environment for students to learn computational physics, with advantages both within the classroom and beyond it, and demonstrate some of the tools and methods the computational physics students at Syracuse use for simulation, visualization, animation, and data analysis.

The Friendly Command Line

There is a good deal of focus on recruiting underrepresented students to study physics at the collegiate level, but a lack of focus on how to make sure they are being recruited into a welcoming and safe environment that values their identity. Because of this, underrepresented students tend to feel a disconnect from the physics community and are more likely to drop out or switch majors. One potential method of combating this issue is increasing the peer networks of these students through informal outreach programs, which give students a sense of purpose, belonging, and confidence in physics. This systematic literature review synthesizes studies on the effects of informal STEM programs on the facilitators and identifies gaps in this research as it pertains to underrepresented students.&nbsp;

Retaining Underrepresented Students through Outreach Programs: A Systematic Literature Review

Is there a crysis in Cosmology?

While efforts have been made in undergraduate science content courses to specifically support pre-service elementary teachers’ skills, knowledge, and pedagogical disciplinary knowledge of experimental design, much of this work predates the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). To date, few, if any, assessment instruments are well correlated with the NGSS practice Planning and Carrying Out Investigations (PCOI). To meet this need, a team including four faculty members from physics, a social scientist, and a science education faculty member developed an appropriate instrument for measuring students’ knowledge of PCOI and, particularly important to pre-service teachers, their students’ pedagogical disciplinary knowledge of this practice. The instrument was developed by mapping items to relevant PCOI sub-practices at the elementary grade level, since it was developed for pre-service elementary STEM teachers. In this presentation, we describe the process of developing items in preparation for validation of the instrument.

Premium content

Addressing Rare Outcomes in PER Quantitative Studies

Next from AAPT WM 21

The Friendly Command Line

Similar lecture

Addressing Rare Outcomes in PER Quantitative Studies