IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/japsta/v43y2016i16p3015-3029.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bayesian modeling of university first-year students' grades after placement test

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Canale
  • Euloge Clovis Kenne Pagui
  • Bruno Scarpa

Abstract

University first-year students grades are naturally correlated with the scores obtained at placement tests. Often this characteristic leads the university grades in the first exams to be asymmetrically distributed. Motivated by the analysis of grades of the basic Statistics examination of first-year students, we discuss informative priors for the shape parameter of the skew-normal model, a class of distribution which account for several degree of asymmetry. Our proposed prior leads to closed-form full-conditional posterior distributions, particularly useful in Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. A Gibbs sampling algorithm is discussed for the joint vector of parameters and the method is applied to a real data set from the School of Economics, University of Padua, Italy. Our analysis reveals that the correlation between the placement test and the grades of first-year students leads to a measurable positive skewness of the distribution of the university grades.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Canale & Euloge Clovis Kenne Pagui & Bruno Scarpa, 2016. "Bayesian modeling of university first-year students' grades after placement test," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(16), pages 3015-3029, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:japsta:v:43:y:2016:i:16:p:3015-3029
    DOI: 10.1080/02664763.2016.1157144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02664763.2016.1157144
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02664763.2016.1157144?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marc Genton & Nicola Loperfido, 2005. "Generalized skew-elliptical distributions and their quadratic forms," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 57(2), pages 389-401, June.
    2. A. Azzalini & A. Capitanio, 1999. "Statistical applications of the multivariate skew normal distribution," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 61(3), pages 579-602.
    3. Branco, Márcia D. & Dey, Dipak K., 2001. "A General Class of Multivariate Skew-Elliptical Distributions," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 99-113, October.
    4. A. Capitanio & A. Azzalini & E. Stanghellini, 2003. "Graphical models for skew‐normal variates," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 30(1), pages 129-144, March.
    5. Barry Arnold & Robert Beaver & Richard Groeneveld & William Meeker, 1993. "The nontruncated marginal of a truncated bivariate normal distribution," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 58(3), pages 471-488, September.
    6. Reinaldo B. Arellano‐Valle & Adelchi Azzalini, 2006. "On the Unification of Families of Skew‐normal Distributions," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 33(3), pages 561-574, September.
    7. Stefano Cabras & Walter Racugno & María Eugenia Castellanos & Laura Ventura, 2012. "A Matching Prior for the Shape Parameter of the Skew-Normal Distribution," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 39(2), pages 236-247, June.
    8. Adelchi Azzalini & Antonella Capitanio, 2003. "Distributions generated by perturbation of symmetry with emphasis on a multivariate skew t‐distribution," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 65(2), pages 367-389, May.
    9. Arellano-Valle, Reinaldo B. & Genton, Marc G. & Loschi, Rosangela H., 2009. "Shape mixtures of multivariate skew-normal distributions," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 91-101, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lhuissier, Stéphane, 2022. "Financial conditions and macroeconomic downside risks in the euro area," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    2. Stéphane Lhuissier, 2019. "Bayesian Inference for Markov-switching Skewed Autoregressive Models," Working papers 726, Banque de France.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kahrari, F. & Rezaei, M. & Yousefzadeh, F. & Arellano-Valle, R.B., 2016. "On the multivariate skew-normal-Cauchy distribution," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 80-88.
    2. Mondal, Sagnik & Genton, Marc G., 2024. "A multivariate skew-normal-Tukey-h distribution," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    3. Yin, Chuancun & Balakrishnan, Narayanaswamy, 2024. "Stochastic representations and probabilistic characteristics of multivariate skew-elliptical distributions," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    4. Jorge M. Arevalillo & Hilario Navarro, 2019. "A stochastic ordering based on the canonical transformation of skew-normal vectors," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 28(2), pages 475-498, June.
    5. Azzalini, Adelchi, 2022. "An overview on the progeny of the skew-normal family— A personal perspective," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    6. Arellano-Valle, Reinaldo B. & Ferreira, Clécio S. & Genton, Marc G., 2018. "Scale and shape mixtures of multivariate skew-normal distributions," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 98-110.
    7. Reinaldo B. Arellano-Valle & Marc G. Genton, 2010. "Multivariate extended skew-t distributions and related families," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 201-234.
    8. Sharon Lee & Geoffrey McLachlan, 2013. "On mixtures of skew normal and skew $$t$$ -distributions," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 7(3), pages 241-266, September.
    9. Adelchi Azzalini, 2012. "Selection models under generalized symmetry settings," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 64(4), pages 737-750, August.
    10. Kim, Hyoung-Moon & Genton, Marc G., 2011. "Characteristic functions of scale mixtures of multivariate skew-normal distributions," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 102(7), pages 1105-1117, August.
    11. Abe, Toshihiro & Fujisawa, Hironori & Kawashima, Takayuki & Ley, Christophe, 2021. "EM algorithm using overparameterization for the multivariate skew-normal distribution," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 151-168.
    12. Hok Shing Kwong & Saralees Nadarajah, 2022. "A New Robust Class of Skew Elliptical Distributions," Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 1669-1691, September.
    13. Ley, Christophe & Paindaveine, Davy, 2010. "On the singularity of multivariate skew-symmetric models," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 101(6), pages 1434-1444, July.
    14. Mehdi Amiri & Ahad Jamalizadeh & Mina Towhidi, 2015. "Inference and further probabilistic properties of the $$ SUN_{n,2}$$ S U N n , 2 -distribution," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1071-1098, November.
    15. V. G. Cancho & Reiko Aoki & V. H. Lachos, 2008. "Bayesian analysis for a skew extension of the multivariate null intercept measurement error model," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(11), pages 1239-1251.
    16. Reinaldo Arellano-Valle & Marc Genton, 2010. "An invariance property of quadratic forms in random vectors with a selection distribution, with application to sample variogram and covariogram estimators," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 62(2), pages 363-381, April.
    17. Jorge M. Arevalillo & Hilario Navarro, 2020. "Data projections by skewness maximization under scale mixtures of skew-normal vectors," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 14(2), pages 435-461, June.
    18. Kim, Hyoung-Moon & Ryu, Duchwan & Mallick, Bani K. & Genton, Marc G., 2014. "Mixtures of skewed Kalman filters," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 228-251.
    19. Arellano-Valle, Reinaldo B. & Azzalini, Adelchi, 2008. "The centred parametrization for the multivariate skew-normal distribution," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 99(7), pages 1362-1382, August.
    20. Sladana Babic & Laetitia Gelbgras & Marc Hallin & Christophe Ley, 2019. "Optimal tests for elliptical symmetry: specified and unspecified location," Working Papers ECARES 2019-26, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:japsta:v:43:y:2016:i:16:p:3015-3029. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CJAS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.