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Deficiencies in beginning undergraduate students’ basic mathematical skills has been an issue of concern in higher education, particularly in the past 15 years. This issue has been tracked and analysed in a number of universities in Ireland and internationally through student scores recorded in mathematics diagnostic tests. Students beginning their science-based and technology-based undergraduate courses in the University of Limerick have had their basic mathematics skills tested without any prior warning through a 40 question diagnostic test during their initial service mathematics lecture since 1998. Data gathered through this diagnostic test have been recorded in a database kept at the university and explored to track trends in mathematical competency of these beginning undergraduates. This paper details findings surrounding an analysis of the database between 2003 and 2013, outlining changes in mathematical competencies of these beginning undergraduates in an attempt to determine reasons for such changes. The analysis found that the proportion of students tested through this diagnostic test that are predicted to be at risk of failing their service mathematics end-of-semester examinations has increased significantly between 2003 and 2013. Furthermore, when students' performance in secondary level mathematics was controlled, it was determined that the performance of beginning undergraduates in 2013 was statistically significantly below that of the performance of the beginning undergraduates recorded 10 years previously. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many universities issue mathematical diagnostic tests to incoming first-year students, covering a range of the basic concepts with which they should be comfortable from secondary school. As far as many lecturers are concerned, the purpose of this test is to determine the students' mathematical knowledge on entry. It should also provide an early indication of which students are likely to need additional help, and hopefully encourage such students to avail of extra support mechanisms at an early stage. However, it is not clear that students recognize these intentions and there is a fear that students who score poorly in the test will have their confidence further damaged in relation to mathematics and will be reluctant to seek help. To this end, a questionnaire was developed to explore students’ perspectives on diagnostic testing. Analysis of responses received to the questionnaire provided an interesting insight into students’ perspectives including the optimum time to conduct such a test, their views on the aims of diagnostic testing, whether they feel that testing is a good idea, and their attitudes to the support systems put in place to help those who scored poorly in the test. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study seeks to bring the discipline of exercise science into the discussion of Quantitative Skills (QS) in science. The author's experiences of providing learning support to students and working with educators in the field are described, demonstrating the difficulty of encouraging students to address their skills deficit. A survey of students’ perceptions of their own QS and of that required for their course, demonstrates the difficulties faced by students who do not have the prescribed assumed knowledge for the course. Limited results from academics suggest that their perceptions of students’ QS deficits are even direr than those of the under-prepared students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper further explores the analytic connections between three commonly used statistical measures of agreement for 2 × 2 contingency tables: sensitivity, specificity, and the kappa coefficient, which are often employed in evaluating diagnostic tests. In particular, for a given fixed kappa the corresponding locus of minimum values of sensitivity and specificity is rigorously derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]