Electronic Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics

Las Vegas, Nevada, March 12-15, 2015

Paper A003

This is an electronic reprint, reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Inc. Originally appeared in the Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, Copyright (C) 2016 by Pearson Education, Inc.


Confusion Theory for Pedagogical Decisions

G. Donald Allen


Department of Mathematics
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843


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Dianne Goldsby


Department of Teaching Learning and Culture
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843


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ABSTRACT

Confusion theory and their associated confusion matrices have been principally used to train and evaluate machine learning. A confusion matrix is also known as a contingency table or an error matrix. They have been used to measure satellite classification of landscape types, for machine recognition of alphabetic characters, and for general pattern recognition. In this paper we will use confusion matrices as an assessment tool for student learning and understanding. This will be approached by evaluating whether the subjects know in which category a given problem resides. The application of confusion theory to student learning seems to be completely new in aspects of assessment of learning.

Keyword(s): pedagogy, assessment