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This study investigates the impact of Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)-funded trials on pupils eligible for free school meals. Although similar analysis is conducted during each individual evaluation, this report conducts a meta-analysis using data from 88 trials and over half a million pupils to reach conclusions. The report contributes to the evidence about what type of approaches may be effective at reducing the attainment gap, which influences the choice of interventions that EEF chooses to trial and scale up. This study investigates the immediate impact of EEF-funded interventions on attainment in literacy and mathematics based on the following research questions: (1) Do EEF trials improve literacy/mathematics attainment of pupils eligible for FSM? (2) What broad types of interventions are more beneficial for mathematics and literacy outcomes of FSM pupils? and (3) Do FSM pupils improve their literacy/mathematics attainment more or less from EEF-funded interventions compared to their non-FSM peers? [This report was written in partnership with the Durham Research Methods Centre (DRMC).]

Classification is the task of assigning a new instance to one of a set of predefined categories based on the attributes of the instance. A classification tree is one of the most commonly used techniques in the area of classification. In this paper, we introduce a novel classification tree algorithm which we call Direct Nonparametric Predictive Inference (D-NPI) classification algorithm. The D-NPI algorithm is completely based on the Nonparametric Predictive Inference (NPI) approach, and it does not use any other assumption or information. The NPI is a statistical methodology which learns from data in the absence of prior knowledge and uses only few modelling assumptions, enabled by the use of lower and upper probabilities to quantify uncertainty. Due to the predictive nature of NPI, it is well suited for classification, as the nature of classification is explicitly predictive as well. The D-NPI algorithm uses a new split criterion called Correct Indication (CI). The CI is about the informativity that the attribute variables will indicate, hence, if the attribute is very informative, it gives high lower and upper probabilities for CI. The CI reports the strength of the evidence that the attribute variables will indicate, based on the data. The CI is completely based on the NPI, and it does not use any additional concepts such as entropy. The performance of the D-NPI classification algorithm is tested against several classification algorithms using classification accuracy, in-sample accuracy and tree size on different datasets from the UCI machine learning repository. The experimental results indicate that the D-NPI classification algorithm performs well in terms of classification accuracy and in-sample accuracy., Comment: 33 pages

The logrank test is a well-known nonparametric test which is often used to compare the survival distributions of two samples including right censored observations, it is also known as the Mantel-Haenszel test. The $G^{\rho}$ family of tests, introduced by Harrington and Fleming (1982), generalizes the logrank test by using weights assigned to observations. In this paper, we present a monotonicity property for the $G^{\rho}$ family of tests, which was motivated by the need to derive bounds for the test statistic in case of imprecise data observations.

There are many situations where comparison of different groups is of great interest. Considering the ordering of the efficiency of some treatments is an example. We present nonparametric predictive inference (NPI) for the ordering of real-valued future observations from multiple independent groups. The uncertainty is quantified using NPI lower and upper probabilities for the event that the next future observations from these groups are ordered in a specific way. Several applications of these NPI lower and upper probabilities are explored, including multiple groups inference, diagnostic accuracy and ranked set sampling.

The concept of joint bivariate signature, introduced by Navarro et al. (2013), is a useful tool for quantifying the reliability of two systems with shared components. As with the univariate system signature, introduced by Samaniego (2007), its applications are limited to systems with only one type of components, which restricts its practical use. Coolen and Coolen-Maturi (2012) introduced the survival signature, which generalizes Samaniego's signature and can be used for systems with multiple types of components. This paper introduces a joint survival signature for multiple systems with multiple types of components and with some components shared between systems. A particularly important feature is that the functioning of these systems can be considered at different times, enabling computation of relevant conditional probabilities with regard to a system's functioning conditional on the status of another system with which it shares components. Several opportunities for practical application and related challenges for further development of the presented concept are briefly discussed, setting out an important direction for future research., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures