Performance in Programming Class and Basic Math Skills

Basic mathematics skills and knowledge are known to be effective predictors of students’ academic performance in university mathematics courses. No such indices, however, have been proposed for performance in programming courses. We analyze the relationship between basic math skills and students’ academic performance. In our test setting, students are given ten minutes to answer several questions on a sheet of paper before the first lecture in a programming class. We found very little correlation between scores on the basic math test and performance in programming. This result suggests that programming skills depend less on mathematical skills and likely much more on how seriously one engages in learning. Our future work includes a more descriptive and detailed analysis of the relationship between math skills and programming performance.