CORRELATION BETWEEN MATHEMATICS AND PROGRAMMING Azfi Zaidi Mohammad Sofi, Nurkaliza Khalid, Abdurrahman Jalil Faculty of Information

Science and Technology Selangor International Islamic University College [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract This paper is the first report of our research involving mathematics course and programming course that we currently doing in our college. This study examines the relationship between discrete mathematics courses and basic programming courses among FTSI (Faculty of Information Science and Technology) students in KUIS (Selangor International Islamic University College). There are 121 samples are taken from the students who registered in session II 2009/2010 in our faculty. All the samples had taken their Discrete Mathematics course in the first semester and taken their Introduction to Programming course in the second semester. Here, we studied the samples final results in both courses. We also divided the sample into two groups based on their level of education, degree and diploma. We used the standard Pearson correlation method to study the correlation between these courses and the results show there exist significant correlation between these courses.The study also revealed there exist significant correlation between the level of student education with the Introduction to Programming course. Keywords: Pearson correlation, Spearman correlation, mathematics and programming 1. Introduction Programming is a very important skill for the information technology and computer science students. Course of Introduction to Computer Programming normally found in several computer-based degrees in higher education institutes. In Malaysia, almost all of the higher institutes or universities offer the computer or information technology based courses such as computer sciences, e-commerce technology, networking, multimedia and others. All the students in these courses at least will take one or more courses that related to programming. It is proven that strong prior mathematical knowledge and background will play the importance roles to success in the programming (Wilson and Shrock, 2001). Other studies have attributed programming success to factors such as the students background in mathematics and science (Byrne and Lyons, 2001). Even though it is proven that strong prior mathematical knowledge and background play significant roles to success in the programming, there is no study conducted in Kolej Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Selangor to find the correlation between course Discrete Mathematics and Introduction to Programming among Fakulti Teknologi dan Sains Informasi diploma students. In this study the intention is to focus on the strength of relationships between course Discrete Mathematics and Introduction to Programming among the FTSI diploma and degree students in KUIS. The final results of students in both courses are collected and measured. The purpose of the study was to study the correlation between the performance based on grade achieved for course Discrete Mathematics and Introduction to Programming. The major areas of Discrete Mathematics course study in our college are include Set Theory, Logic, Functions, Induction and Recursion, Counting Techniques, Relations, Boolean Algebra, Graphs, and Trees. Upon completion of all these areas in Discrete Mathematics

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course, the students mostly will be able to use their experience and knowledge that they had learned in Discrete Mathematics course to apply in Intoduction to Programming course that require much on pramming practical using computer. In this preliminary report, we studied the correlation between Discrete Mathematics course and Introduction to Programming course. The dependent variable here is Introduction to Programming course and the independent variable is Discrete Mathematics course. We also studied the correlation between the students level of education and Introduction to Programming course. The dependent variable here is Introduction of Programming course and the independent variable is the level of student education.

2. Methodology The main focus of the research is to verify that math course is beneficial for programming course. The main constraint is that students have a set of curriculum of courses to follow. The best way to research a math course prerequisite that indicates the required cognitive skills is to correlate course grades with programming course grades (White and Sivitanides, 2003). This study was analyzed by using standard Pearson correlation method as done by (Byrne & Lyons, 2001; Campbell & McCabe, 1984; Cantwell-Wilson & Shrock, 2001; Evans & Simpkin, 1989; Hagan & Markhan, 2000; Holden & Weeden, 2003; Leeper & Silver, 1982; McCracken et al., 2001; Wiedenbeck & Kain, 2004; Werth, 1986). However we also did analyze this sample using Spearman correlation because there were also exist stronger significant using this method and we will discuss about it later. This study was done independent of instructors. The intervening variables of different instructors were not controlled. The math courses were taken with different instructors at Selangor International Islamic University College. 2.1 Data A request was made to Selangor International Islamic University College Academic and Examination Department for all students who took first Introduction to Programming (DTCP / BTCP) course for session II 2009/2010 academic year. The records contained the (DTCP / BTCP) grades and one prerequisite mathematics grade (DTSC / BTSC) that is Discrete Mathematics. The sample size was 121. Table 1 : Scale for the grade
MARKS GRADE

0 40 44 50 56 64 72 80 90

F D D+ C C+ B B+ A A+

SCALE 2 4 4.4 5 5.6 6.4 7.2 8 9

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Table 1 above show the scale for the grade of courses that sample achieved. Grades were given the values of 9 for A+, 8 for A, 7.2 for B+, 6.4 for B, 5.6 for C+, 5 for C, 4.4 for D+, 4 for D, and a 2 is assigned for an F. 2.2 Variables The dependent variable was the Introduction to Programming course (DTCP / BTCP) and the independent variable was the Discrete Mathematics course (DTSC / BTSC). 3. Analysis Results Table 2 : Analysis result for the sample Sample Size Pearson correlation Spearman correlation N1=121 .470** .550** N2= 98 .453* .499* N3=23 .475** .566**

Note : ** the correlation is significant at .01 level * the correlation is significant at .05 level N1 size sample for all students N2 size sample for diploma level students N3 size sample for degree level students Table 2 above show the result of Pearson and Spearman correlation for all the sample N1, sample for diploma students, N2 and sample for degree students, N3.

3. Discussion As shown in the Table 2, there exist significant correlation for N1 and N3 at the level .05 and .01 for the N3. Here, we can see the significant correlation between Discrete Mathematics course and Introduction to Programming course is .470** using Pearson correlation and .550** using Spearman correlation for N1=121. There are also exist significant correlation between the level of students education with the Introduction to Programming course. For the Diploma students, N2, the correlation is significant at .05 level with .453* using Pearson correlation and .499* using Spearman correlation. And for the degree level, there exist significant correlation at .01 with .475** using Pearson correlation and .566** using Spearman correlation. Although all of the correlation are not quite strong ( below than .7), but this is a preliminary testing that we have done using single batch of students at our college as sample. We will further this study and we believe that we will have the stronger significant if we use more number of samples. In this preliminary study, we also realized it is not good for us to use the scale as shown in the Table 1 because it will not produce the precise analysis. Figure 1 and Figure 2 below show the explanation.

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Figure 1 : Scatter graph using exact marks

Figure 2: Scatter graph using scale In the future, we will do study the correlation between mathematics course and programming course in deeper. More sample will be use? Of course. Currently at our college, there are a unique case we want to study also. It is for Diploma of ECommerce (DEC) students and for Diploma of Computer Science students (DCS).

Figure 3: Flow of prerequisite courses for DEC and DCS Based on Figure 3, DEC students in our college must requisite Discrete Mathematics at the semester 1 and Fundamental Mathematics at the semester 2 before Introduction to

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Programming course and it is contrary for DCS students. What will happen if DEC student must requisite Fundamental Mathematics for semester 1 and Discrete Mathematics for the semester 2? And what if DCS student must requisite the opposite flow of courses as shown in Figure 3? Does it will affect the students grade in Introduction to Programming course? 4. Conclusion There are multiple questions in the Section 3 for us to answer and we need a further research for that. For now in our first preliminary report paper, we must said that there are exist significant correlation between mathematics and programming. References Byrne, P. and Lyons, G. (2001). The effect of student attributes on success in programming. In Proceedings of the 6th annual conference on Innovation and technology in Computer Science Education, pages 4952. Bergin, S. and Reilly, R. (2005). Programming: Factors that influence success. ACM SIGCSE Bull, Volume 37, Issue 1, pages 411 415. Cantwell-Wilson, B. and Shrock, S. (2001). Contributing to Success in an Introductory Computer Science Course: A Study of Twelve Factors. Proceedings of the ThirtySecond SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pages 184188. Campbell, P.F. and McCabe, G.P. (1984). Predicting the success of freshmen in a computer science major. Commun. ACM, 27(11):11081113. Evans, G.E. and Simkin, M.G. (1989). What best predicts computer proficiency? Commun. ACM, 32(11):13221327. Holden, E. and Weeden, E. (2003) The impact of prior experience in an information technology programming course sequence. In Proceeding of the 4th conference on Information technology curriculum, pages 4146. Hagan, D. and Markham, S. (2000). Does it help to have some programming experience before beginning a computing degree program? In Proceedings of the 5th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSEconference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, pages 2528. Leeper, R.R. and Silver, J.L. (1982) Predicting success in a first programming course. In Proceedings of the thirteenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, pages 147150. McCracken, M., Almstrum, V., Diaz, D., Guzdial, M., Hagan, D., Kolikant, Y. B.-D., Laxer, C., Thomas, L., Utting, I., and Wilusz, T., A(2001). Multi-institutional study of assessment of programming skills of first-year cs students. SIGCSE Bull., 33(4):125 180. Wiedenbeck, D.L.S. and Kain, V. (2004). Factors affecting course outcomes in introductory programming. In Proceedings of the 16th Workshop on Psychology of Programming, PPIG04, pages 97109. Werth, L.H. (1986). Predicting student performance in a beginning computer science class. In Proceedings of the seventeenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, pages 138143. White,G. and Sivitanides, M. (2003). An empirical investigation of the relationship between success in mathematics and visual programming courses. Journal of Information Systems Education. v14 i4. 409-416.

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