Inter-Arrival Time Modeling of Threshold Scores in Mathematics Among School Pupils; A Case of Acacia Crest School, Kenya

Abstract

Mathematical literacy is the ability to use numbers to help solve real-world problems. It focuses on pupils' ability to analyze, justify and communicate ideas effectively with regard to formulating, solving and interpreting Mathematical problems in a variety of forms and situations. The study modeled above threshold scores in mathematics among school pupils as an indicator for being mathematically literate. Modeling was on the inter-arrival times for pupils scoring above threshold scores (Mathematics mean score) for a given sample of pupils in their mid and end of term examinations. The Poisson distribution has been widely used as a statistical procedure for modeling inter-arrival times for count data outcomes. However, for heavy-tailed inter-arrival times of successive outcomes, the Poisson distribution exhibits an empirical observational failure thus setting up a framework for the use of other distributions that can handle such heavy-tailed data. The study used the generalized Gumbel and Weibull inter-arrival time distributions which were assumed to nest the standard Poisson distribution in which Weibull inter-arrival gave a better fit to the data. Data used was secondary data on pupil performance in Mathematics in relation to other subjects from Acacia Crest School.