A random forest classified flagged versus non-flagged word problems with the best accuracy of five tested models (AUC = 0.75)¶
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Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · checked against its sources 2026-10-19 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2028: tool and model accuracy changes quickly
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q2 i? On the hold-out test set, the random forest (AUC 0.75, accuracy 0.70) outperformed elastic net, XGBoost, SVM, and neural network models. → 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
Model comparison on a 20% scenario-held-out test set, with 3-fold cross-validation for training. Table 1 prints Random Forest AUC 0.75, accuracy 0.70, versus Elastic Net 0.65, XGBoost 0.62, SVM 0.69, Neural Net 0.65. No effect size is printed.
"Fit statistics for each model are provided in Table 1. The random forest had the best overall performance on the hold out test set."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Flagged word problems were shorter (lower word count) but had more sentences than non-flagged problems in descriptive statistics — related
- 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 — related
- Partial dependence plots showed higher word count, more dependent clauses, and higher custom magnitude raised predicted flag probability, with non-linear relationships — related
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- In the random forest, word count was the most important readability feature while traditional readability formulas ranked near the bottom — related
- Three word embedding methods and three classifiers were introduced to predict item quality for accessible math assessments — a broader claim this one bears on
- Random Forest is the most commonly used NLP-supporting algorithm in LA, while deep learning models (LSTM, BERT) have been widely adopted since 2021 — related
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- Random forest algorithms yielded the best classification performance in K–8 MMLA studies comparing multiple machine learning models — a broader claim this one bears on
- Simple classifiers (Logistic Regression, Naive Bayes) outperformed tree-based models on this small dataset — reports the opposite
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- Decision trees achieve competitive accuracy with black-box models (LR, RF, SVM), which performed slightly better but lack interpretability — reports the opposite
- Machine learning methods outperformed logistic regression in classification accuracy across reviewed studies — a broader claim this one bears on
- Rewriting MATHia word problems for struggling readers, by human experts or LLMs, sped completion by 30% and improved mastery rate — related
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- SVM-based regressors outperformed other regressors in the ETF price-delta forecasting benchmark — related
- PPB maintained comparable readability on three of four measures while increasing Flesch-Kincaid toward grade level — related
- SVM and random forest classifiers showed consistent performance in classifying ethnic bias, with F1-scores of 0.71 and 0.70 on the test set — related
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- Random Forest reaches CV F1 = 0.924 on the psychographic survey dataset, but the article presents this only as a localized exploratory pilot — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
random-forest-best-auc-flagged-problems |
title |
A random forest classified flagged versus non-flagged word problems with the best accuracy of five tested models (AUC = 0.75) |
description |
A random forest classified flagged versus non-flagged word problems with the best accuracy of five tested models (AUC = 0.75) |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2025 |
source_checked |
2026-10-19 |
recheck_by |
2028 |
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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