4,446 of 9,421 MATHia word problems showed larger-than-expected error-rate gaps between less- and more-skilled readers and were flagged for potential readability concerns¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Across 74 workspaces, 4,446 of 9,421 word problems showed significant deviation in error rates by reading ability after correcting for baseline differences. → Kole Norberg 2025
Evidence¶
Kole Norberg 2025¶
Kole Norberg, Husni Almoubayyed, and Stephen Fancsali. (2025). Linguistic Features Predicting Math Word Problem Readability Among Less-Skilled Readers. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Educational Data Mining, Palermo, Italy. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15870274
q2 · i? · associational · r2
Log analysis of 297,072 students completing word problems in MATHia during 2023-2024. Corrected error rates (baseline gap subtracted) were compared with a Wilcox test; the study reports "4,446 out of 9,421 word problems" flagged. No effect size is printed.
"4,446 out of 9,421 word problems across 74 workspaces showed significant deviation in error rates based on reading ability and were flagged for potential readability concerns."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Partial dependence plots showed higher word count, more dependent clauses, and higher custom magnitude raised predicted flag probability, with non-linear relationships — related
- Flagged word problems were shorter (lower word count) but had more sentences than non-flagged problems in descriptive statistics — related
- A random forest classified flagged versus non-flagged word problems with the best accuracy of five tested models (AUC = 0.75) — related
- In the random forest, word count was the most important readability feature while traditional readability formulas ranked near the bottom — related
- Rewriting MATHia word problems for struggling readers, by human experts or LLMs, sped completion by 30% and improved mastery rate — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
mathia-word-problems-flagged-reading-gaps |
title |
4,446 of 9,421 MATHia word problems showed larger-than-expected error-rate gaps between less- and more-skilled readers and were flagged for potential readability concerns |
description |
4,446 of 9,421 MATHia word problems showed larger-than-expected error-rate gaps between less- and more-skilled readers and were flagged for potential readability concerns |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2025 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-08 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — kole-norberg-2025 |
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