La preparazione degli studenti di Ingegneria e Economia dopo gli esami di matematica di base

The study of mathematics is essential in many fields as it is the basic language shared by all quantitative disciplines. Therefore, it is interesting to ascertain at what extent the basic concepts may be lost over time. We carried out a survey on students attending third-year courses and over, in the Faculty of Engineering and in the Faculty of Economics, administering a test containing items pertaining to elementary concepts of Mathematics. The results showed that students in the Faculty of Engineering had a better grasp of the mathematical concepts than those in the Faculty of Economics. However, considering the differences between the two Faculties, the gap was actually narrower than what the test results would first lead us to believe. The structure of the model representing the influences of the explanatory variables on the outcome of the test (test score) was similar for both Faculties. In particular, the more predictive factors were high school scores and the number of Mathematics exams already passed at the University. The time elapsed since the last Mathematics exam did not show any particular influence on test scores. However, among the Engineering students, the time elapsed demonstrated a weak concurrent action with other variables, «incorporating» its influence. The correlation between the time elapsed since the last Mathematics exam and the test score was always negative, as expected.