The various empirical models built for enrollment management, operations, and program evaluation purposes may have lost their predictive power as a result of the recent collective impact of COVID restrictions, widespread social upheaval, and the shift in educational preferences. This statistical artifact is known as model drifting, data-shift,…

Categorical data become increasingly ubiquitous in the modern big data era. In this dissertation, we propose novel statistical learning and inference methods for large-scale categorical data, focusing on latent variable models and their applications to psychometrics. In psychometric assessments, the subjects' underlying aptitude often cannot be…

This study shows that residual variation can cause problems related to scaling in exponential random graph models (ERGM). Residual variation is likely to exist when there are unmeasured variables in a model--even those uncorrelated with other predictors--or when the logistic form of the model is inappropriate. As a consequence, coefficients cannot…

Considers possibility of developing a computer tutor around an explicit concept-learning theory derived from machine learning techniques. Some problems with using the focusing (and similar) algorithms in this role are discussed and possible solutions are developed. Design for a guided discovery learning system for tutoring concepts is proposed.…