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

Mathematics represents the basic language for all quantitative disciplines, therefore its learning is fundamental in many fields and it is interesting to verify how basic concepts may be lost as time passes. We carried out a survey between students attending courses of the third year and over, in the Faculty of Engineering and in the Faculty of Economics, assigning them a test containing items about the elementary concepts of Mathematics. The results show that students in the Faculty of Engineering know the mathematical concepts better than those in the Faculty of Economics. However, considering the differences between the two Faculties, the gap is lower than what appears from the outcomes of the test. The structure of the model representing the influences of the explanatory variables on the outcome of the test (score test) is similar in the two Faculties. In particular, the more predictive factors are the high school score and the number of Mathematics exams already passed at the University. The time elapsed since the last Mathematics exam does not show any peculiar influence on the test score. However, at the Faculty of Engineering, there was a weak concurrent action of this time with other variables, which incorporate its influence. The correlation between the time elapsed since the last Mathematics exam and the score of the test was always negative, as expected.