Mathematical Sciences

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Mathematical research at MSU is focused primarily on related topics in pure and applied mathematics. Research programs complement each other and are often applied to problems in science and engineering. Research in statistics encompasses a broad range of theoretical and applied topics. Because the statisticians are actively engaged in interdisciplinary work, much of the statistical research is directed toward practical problems. Mathematics education faculty are active in both qualitative and quantitative experimental research areas. These include teacher preparation, coaching and mentoring for in-service teachers, online learning and curriculum development.

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Author: search.filters.author.Hancock, Stacey A.

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    Coding Code: Qualitative Methods for Investigating Data Science Skills
    (Informa UK Limited, 2023-11) Theobold, Allison S.; Wickstrom, Megan H.; Hancock, Stacey A.
    Despite the elevated importance of Data Science in Statistics, there exists limited research investigating how students learn the computing concepts and skills necessary for carrying out data science tasks. Computer Science educators have investigated how students debug their own code and how students reason through foreign code. While these studies illuminate different aspects of students’ programming behavior or conceptual understanding, a method has yet to be employed that can shed light on students’ learning processes. This type of inquiry necessitates qualitative methods, which allow for a holistic description of the skills a student uses throughout the computing code they produce, the organization of these descriptions into themes, and a comparison of the emergent themes across students or across time. In this article we share how to conceptualize and carry out the qualitative coding process with students’ computing code. Drawing on the Block Model to frame our analysis, we explore two types of research questions which could be posed about students’ learning. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
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    The Effect of Teammate Personality on Team Production
    (Elsevier, 2022-10) Hancock, Stacey A.; Hill, Andrew J.
    Many goods and services are produced in teams. We explore how teammate personality traits impact productivity on joint team tasks. Studying student teams at a large university and considering the “Big Five” personality characteristics of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness, we find that teammate conscientiousness has a small, positive impact on team performance: a one standard deviation increase in teammate conscientiousness increases performance on a team task by about three percent of a standard deviation in our preferred specification. The effect is evident holding teammate ability and gender fixed, and suggestively operates through improved team functioning and sustained increases in student effort. We also find evidence of positive spillovers from teammate openness and negative spillovers from teammate extroversion.
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