Predicting Student Performance in Software Engineering Education Using Random Forest: A Data-Driven Approach Based on Subjective Assessments

To predict the potential geographic distribution of Oncomelania hupensis in Yunnan Province using random forest (RF) and maximum entropy (MaxEnt) models, so as to provide insights into O. hupensis surveillance and control in Yunnan Province. The O. hupensis snail survey data in Yunnan Province from 2015 to 2016 were collected and converted into O. hupensis snail distribution site data. Data of 22 environmental variables in Yunnan Province were collected, including twelve climate variables (annual potential evapotranspiration, annual mean ground surface temperature, annual precipitation, annual mean air pressure, annual mean relative humidity, annual sunshine duration, annual mean air temperature, annual mean wind speed, ≥ 0 ℃ annual accumulated temperature, ≥ 10 ℃ annual accumulated temperature, aridity and index of moisture), eight geographical variables (normalized difference vegetation index, landform type, land use type, altitude, soil type, soil textureclay content, soil texture-sand content and soil texture-silt content) and two population and economic variables (gross domestic product and population). Variables were screened with Pearson correlation test and variance inflation factor (VIF) test. The RF and MaxEnt models and the ensemble model were created using the biomod2 package of the software R 4.2.1, and the potential distribution of O. hupensis snails after 2016 was predicted in Yunnan Province. The predictive effects of models were evaluated through cross-validation and independent tests, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), true skill statistics (TSS) and Kappa statistics were used for model evaluation. In addition, the importance of environmental variables was analyzed, the contribution of environmental variables output by the models with AUC values of > 0.950 and TSS values of > 0.850 were selected for normalization processing, and the importance percentage of environmental variables was obtained to analyze the importance of environmental variables. Data of 148 O. hupensis snail distribution sites and 15 environmental variables were included in training sets of RF and MaxEnt models, and both RF and MaxEnt models had high predictive performance, with both mean AUC values of > 0.900 and all mean TSS values and Kappa values of > 0.800, and significant differences in the AUC (t = 19.862, P < 0.05), TSS (t = 10.140, P < 0.05) and Kappa values (t = 10.237, P < 0.05) between two models. The AUC, TSS and Kappa values of the ensemble model were 0.996, 0.954 and 0.920, respectively. Independent data verification showed that the AUC, TSS and Kappa values of the RF model and the ensemble model were all 1, which still showed high performance in unknown data modeling, and the MaxEnt model showed poor performance, with TSS and Kappa values of 0 for 24%(24/100) of the modeling results. The modeling results of 79 RF models, 38 MaxEnt models and their ensemble models with AUC values of > 0.950 and TSS values of > 0.850 were included in the evaluation of importance of environmental variables. The importance of annual sunshine duration (SSD) was 32.989%, 37.847% and 46.315% in the RF model, the MaxEnt model and their ensemble model, while the importance of annual mean relative humidity (RHU) was 30.947%, 15.921% and 28.121%, respectively. Important environment variables were concentrated in modeling results of the RF model, dispersed in modeling results of the MaxEnt model, and most concentrated in modeling results of the ensemble model. The potential distribution of O. hupensis snails after 2016 was predicted to be relatively concentrated in Yunnan Province by the RF model and relatively large by the MaxEnt model, and the distribution of O. hupensis snails predicted by the ensemble model was mostly the joint distribution of O. hupensis snails predicted by RF and MaxEnt models. Both RF and MaxEnt models are effective to predict the potential distribution of O. hupensis snails in Yunnan Province, which facilitates targeted O. hupensis snail control.

BackgroundLumbar drainage is widely used in the clinic; however, forecasting lumbar drainage-related meningitis (LDRM) is limited. We aimed to establish prediction models using supervised machine learning (ML) algorithms.MethodsWe utilized a cohort of 273 eligible lumbar drainage cases. Data were preprocessed and split into training and testing sets. Optimal hyper-parameters were archived by 10-fold cross-validation and grid search. The support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and artificial neural network (ANN) were adopted for model training. The area under the operating characteristic curve (AUROC) and precision-recall curve (AUPRC), true positive ratio (TPR), true negative ratio (TNR), specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, and kappa coefficient were used for model evaluation. All trained models were internally validated. The importance of features was also analyzed.ResultsIn the training set, all the models had AUROC exceeding 0.8. SVM and the RF models had an AUPRC of more than 0.6, but the ANN model had an unexpectedly low AUPRC (0.380). The RF and ANN models revealed similar TPR, whereas the ANN model had a higher TNR and demonstrated better specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, and kappa efficiency. In the testing set, most performance indicators of established models decreased. However, the RF and AVM models maintained adequate AUROC (0.828 vs. 0.719) and AUPRC (0.413 vs. 0.520), and the RF model also had better TPR, specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, and kappa efficiency. Site leakage showed the most considerable mean decrease in accuracy.ConclusionsThe RF and SVM models could predict LDRM, in which the RF model owned the best performance, and site leakage was the most meaningful predictor.

Landslide susceptibility evaluation is critical for landslide prevention and risk management. Based on the slope unit, this study uses the information value method- random forest (IV-RF) model to evaluate the landslide susceptibility in the deep valley area. First, based on the historical landslide data, a landslide inventory was developed by using remote sensing technology (InSAR and optical remote sensing) and field investigation methods. Twelve factors were then selected as the input data for a landslide susceptibility model. Second, slope units with different scales were obtained by the r.slopeunits method and the information value method- random forest (IV-RF) model is used to evaluate the landslide susceptibility. Finally, the spatial distribution characteristics of landslide susceptibility grade under the optimal scale are analyzed. The results showed that under the slope unit obtained when c = 0.1 and a = 3 × 105 m2, the internal homogeneity/external heterogeneity of 8425 slope units extracted by the r.slopeunits method is the best, with an AUC of 0.905 and an F1 of 0.908. In this case, the accuracy of landslide susceptibility evaluation is the highest as well; it is shown that the finer slope units would not always lead to the higher accuracy of landslide susceptibility evaluation results; it is necessary to comprehensively consider the internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity of the slope units. Under the optimal slope unit scale, the number of landslides in the highly and extremely highly susceptible areas in the landslide susceptibility map accounted for 82.60% of the total number of landslides, which was consistent with the actual distribution of landslides; this study shows that the method, combining the slope unit and the information value method- random forest (IV-RF) model, for landslide susceptibility evaluation can obtain high accuracy.

The tree crown is an important part of a tree and is closely related to forest growth status, forest canopy density, and other forest growth indicators. Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook) is an important tree species in southern China. A three-dimensional (3D) visualization assistant decision-making system of plantations could be improved through the construction of crown contour envelope models (CCEMs), which could aid plantation production. The goal of this study was to establish CCEMs, based on random forest and mathematical modeling, and to compare them. First, the regression equation of a tree crown was calculated using the least squares method. Then, forest characteristic factors were screened using methods based on mutual information, recursive feature elimination, least absolute shrink and selection operator, and random forest, and the random forest model was established based on the different screening results. The accuracy of the random forest model was higher than that of the mathematical modeling. The best performing model based on mathematical modeling was the quartic polynomial with the largest crown radius as the variable (R-squared (R2) = 0.8614 and root mean square error (RMSE) = 0.2657). Among the random forest regression models, the regression model constructed using mutual information as the feature screening method was the most accurate (R2 = 0.886, RMSE = 0.2406), which was two percentage points higher than mathematical modeling. Compared with mathematical modeling, the random forest model can reflect the differences among trees and aid 3D visualization of a Chinese fir plantation.

Among older adults, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is widely recognized as one of the most prevalent diseases. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a frequent complication of DM, mainly characterized by renal microvascular damage. Early detection, aggressive prevention, and cure of DN are key to improving prognosis. Establishing a diagnostic and predictive model for DN is crucial in auxiliary diagnosis. To investigate the factors that impact T2DM complicated with DN and utilize this information to develop a predictive model. The clinical data of 210 patients diagnosed with T2DM and admitted to the First People's Hospital of Wenling between August 2019 and August 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. According to whether the patients had DN, they were divided into the DN group (complicated with DN) and the non-DN group (without DN). Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to explore factors affecting DN in patients with T2DM. The data were randomly split into a training set (n = 147) and a test set (n = 63) in a 7:3 ratio using a random function. The training set was used to construct the nomogram, decision tree, and random forest models, and the test set was used to evaluate the prediction performance of the model by comparing the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, recall, precision, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Among the 210 patients with T2DM, 74 (35.34%) had DN. The validation dataset showed that the accuracies of the nomogram, decision tree, and random forest models in predicting DN in patients with T2DM were 0.746, 0.714, and 0.730, respectively. The sensitivities were 0.710, 0.710, and 0.806, respectively; the specificities were 0.844, 0.875, and 0.844, respectively; the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of the patients were 0.811, 0.735, and 0.850, respectively. The Delong test results revealed that the AUC values of the decision tree model were lower than those of the random forest and nomogram models (P < 0.05), whereas the difference in AUC values of the random forest and column-line graph models was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Among the three prediction models, random forest performs best and can help identify patients with T2DM at high risk of DN.

The objective of this study is to predict road flooding risks based on topographic, hydrologic, and temporal precipitation features using machine learning models. Existing road inundation studies either lack empirical data for model validations or focus mainly on road inundation exposure assessment based on flood maps. This study addresses this limitation by using crowdsourced and fine-grained traffic data as an indicator of road inundation, and topographic, hydrologic, and temporal precipitation features as predictor variables. Two tree-based machine learning models (random forest and AdaBoost) were then tested and trained for predicting road inundations in the contexts of 2017 Hurricane Harvey and 2019 Tropical Storm Imelda in Harris County, Texas. The findings from Hurricane Harvey indicate that precipitation is the most important feature for predicting road inundation susceptibility, and that topographic features are more critical than hydrologic features for predicting road inundations in both storm cases. The random forest and AdaBoost models had relatively high AUC scores (0.860 and 0.810 for Harvey respectively and 0.790 and 0.720 for Imelda respectively) with the random forest model performing better in both cases. The random forest model showed stable performance for Harvey, while varying significantly for Imelda. This study advances the emerging field of smart flood resilience in terms of predictive flood risk mapping at the road level. In particular, such models could help impacted communities and emergency management agencies develop better preparedness and response strategies with improved situational awareness of road inundation likelihood as an extreme weather event unfolds.

Assessing treatment switch among patients with multiple sclerosis: A machine learning approach

Comparative study of different machine learning models in landslide susceptibility assessment: A case study of Conghua District, Guangzhou, China

Objective To preliminarily analyze the prediction efficiency of multimodal MRI-based radiomics model for preoperative glioma IDH1 gene expression type. Methods The MRI data of 108 surgery-proven glioma patients from May 2015 to January 2019 were retrospectively analyzed, and the MRI data included axial T1WI,T2WI,fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR),DWI imaging and enhanced T1WI sequence.Forty-seven cases were IDH1 mutant type, and 61 cases were IDH1 wild type. All patients were divided into training and validation groups according to the 7∶3 ratio of the random forest model. Seventy-three cases were in training group, and 35 cases were in validation group. Independent predictors of IDH1 mutation were screened by univariate analysis combined with multivariate logistic regression analysis (P<0.05) in order to construct a random forest diagnosis model of general clinical information and conventional MRI morphological features.General clinical information and conventional MRI morphological features included gender, age, umbers of cases of left and right hemispheres, location of tumors, maximum diameter of tumors, peritumoral edema, intratumoral cystic degeneration, enhancement and ADC value of tumors. The ROI was manually outlined by MaZda software in the most obvious level of 5 sequences of tumor mass and the radiomics features were extracted, including the gray-level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM), the run-length matrix(RUN), the absolute gradient(GRA),the auto-regressive model(ARM) and wavelets transform(WAV). The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO)regression were used to select image radiomics features with a method of 10 fold cross -validation and to reduce the dimensions. The screened image radiomics labels were combined with the conventional morphological feature independent predictors to construct a multimodal MRI-based random forest model, and the validation data set was used to evaluate the accuracy and diagnostic efficiency of each model. The sensitivity and specificity of conventional MRI morphological feature model and multimodal MRI-based radiomics prediction model were evaluated dynamically by drawing ROC curves, and the prediction efficiency of the two models was quantified by using AUC statistical indicators. The model classification error rate under different outcomes and the classification error rate of out of bag(OOB)were used to evaluate the stability of the multimodal MRI-based random forest model. The contribution rate of each variable to the model was reflected by the characteristic variables importance assessment map. Results Univariate regression analysis of the conventional MRI morphological characteristics showed that peritumoral edema, cystic degeneration and enhancement were the three independent predictors of IDH1 gene expression (P<0.01). LASSO algorithm and 10-fold cross-validation identified six robust radiomic features including high frequency coefficients of wavelet transform (WavEnHH_s-4) of T2WI, S(4,4) inverse difference of gray uniformity measurement (InvDfMom),S(5,0) Entropy (entropy),WavEnHH_s-4 of T1WI enhancement, S(1,1) InvDfMom,S(1, -1) Entropy Difference (DifEntrp)of Flair.The error rate of classification for different outcomes and classification error rate of random forest OOB data of multimodal MRI radiomics diagnosis model finally stabilized at 10%. The results of Characteristic Variable Importance Assessment Map: Mean Decrease Accuracy and Mean Decrease Gini index were consistent, which showed that besides three conventional MRI morphological predictors peritumoral edema, enhancement and cystic degeneration, the radiomics labels also played a key role in the model. The results of ROC curve showed that the accuracy, specificity, sensitivity and AUC of conventional MRI morphological feature model were 82.7%, 68.4%, 90.9% and 0.835, respectively, and those of multimodal MRI-based radiomics model were 88.5%, 89.5%, 87.8% and 0.956 respectively. Conclusion Multimodal MRI-based radiomics random forest model can improve the predictive efficiency of preoperative glioma IDH1 gene expression type more quantitatively. Key words: Glioma; Texture; Radiomics; Magnetic resonance imaging

Eğitim, her birey ve bir bütün olarak toplum için ekonomik, sosyal ve kültürel gelişimin temelidir. Ülkemizde orta öğretim kurumlarına Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı tarafından yapılan lise giriş sınavı ile öğrenci kabul edilmektedir. Bu çalışmada, 2019 yılında Türkiye&#039;nin 81 ilinde lise giriş sınavına giren öğrencilerin başarı oranları makine öğrenimi regresyon ve beta regresyon modeli ile ele alınmıştır. Bu makale, boşanma oranı, gayri safi yurtiçi hasıla, okuma yazma bilmeyenlerin sayısı ve yüksek öğretim nüfusu sayısı gibi değişkenleri kullanarak öğrencilerin başarı oranlarını modellemeyi, tahmin etmeyi ve açıklamayı amaçlamaktadır. Başarı oranlarını tahmin etmek için destek vektörü regresyon, rastgele orman, karar ağacı ve beta regresyon modeli uygulanmıştır. En yüksek R2 değerine sahip iki modelin beta regresyon ve rastgele orman modelleri olduğu bulunmuştur. Beta regresyon ve rastgele orman modelinin tahmin hataları incelendiğinde, başarı oranlarını tahmin etmede rastgele orman modelinin beta regresyon modeline göre nispeten üstün olduğu görülmektedir. Beta regresyon modeli Çanakkale ilinin başarı oranlarının en iyi yordayıcısı iken, rastgele orman modeli Ankara&#039;nın başarı oranlarını iyi tahmin etmiştir. Ayrıca beta regresyon modelinde başarı oranları için anlamlı bulunan değişkenlerin rastgele orman modelinde de önemli olduğu görülmüştür. Öğrencilerin başarı oranlarını tahmin etmek için hem beta hem de rastgele orman modellerinin kullanılması önerilir.

For the safe and economical construction of embankment dams, the mechanical behaviour of the rockfill materials used in the dam’s shell must be analyzed. The characterization of rockfill materials with specified shear strength is difficult and expensive due to the presence of particles greater than 500 mm in diameter. This work investigates the feasibility of using an extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) computing paradigm to estimate the shear strength of rockfill materials. To train and validate the proposed XGBoost model, a total of 165 databases obtained from the literature are chosen. The XGBoost model was compared against support vector machine (SVM), adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), random forest (RF), and K‐nearest neighbor (KNN) models described in the literature. XGBoost beats SVM, RF, AdaBoost, and KNN models in terms of performance evaluation metrics such as coefficient of determination ( R 2 ), Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient (NSE), and error in the root mean square ratio (RMSE) to the standard deviation of the measured data (RSR). The results demonstrated that the XGBoost model has the highest prediction performance with ( R 2 = 0.9707, NSE = 0.9701, and RSR = 0.1729), followed by the SVM model with ( R 2 = 0.9655, NSE = 0.9639, and RSR = 0.1899), RF ( R 2 = 0.9545, NSE = 0.9542, and RSR = 0.2140), the AdaBoost model with ( R 2 = 0.9390, NSE = 0.9388, and RSR = 0.2474) and the KNN model with ( R 2 = 0.6233, NSE = 0.6180, and RSR = 0.6181). A sensitivity analysis has been conducted to ascertain the impact of each investigated input parameter. This study demonstrates that the established XGBoost model for estimating the shear strength of rockfill materials is reliable.

This study comprehensively considers soil formation factors such as land use types, soil types, depths, and geographical conditions in Lanxi City, China. Using multi-source public data, three environmental variable screening methods, the Boruta algorithm, Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), were used to optimize and combine 47 environmental variables for the modeling of soil pH based on the data collected from farmland in the study area in 2022, and their effects were evaluated. A Random Forest (RF) model was used to predict soil pH in the study area. At the same time, Pearson correlation analysis, an environmental variable importance assessment based on the RF model, and SHAP explanatory model were used to explore the main controlling factors of soil pH and reveal its spatial differentiation mechanism. The results showed that in the presence of a large number of environmental variables, the model with covariates selected by PSO before the application of the Random Forest algorithm had higher prediction accuracy than that of Boruta–RF, RFE–RF, and all variable prediction RF models (MAE = 0.496, RMSE = 0.641, R2 = 0.413, LCCC = 0.508). This indicates that PSO, as a covariate selection method, effectively optimized the input variables for the RF model, enhancing its performance. In addition, the results of the Pearson correlation analysis, RF-model-based environmental variable importance assessment, and SHAP explanatory model consistently indicate that Channel Network Base Level (CNBL), Elevation (DEM), Temperature mean (T_m), Evaporation (E_m), Land surface temperature mean (LST_m), and Humidity mean (H_m) are key factors affecting the spatial differentiation of soil pH. In summary, the approach of using PSO for covariate selection before applying the RF model exhibits high prediction accuracy and can serve as an effective method for predicting the spatial distribution of soil pH, providing important references for accurately simulating the spatial mapping of soil attributes in hilly and basin areas.

Developing machine learning models with multi-source environmental data to predict wheat yield in China

To address the high cost and complexity of marine exploration technology, this study proposes a novel approach that utilizes an underwater robot equipped with a metal detector to identify ore types and grades on the seabed directly. By integrating laboratory physical experiments, computer vision technology, classification algorithms, and mathematical regression analysis, multiple types of metal ores are classified, and the grade of major minerals is predicted under the signal attenuation effects of PVC boards and seawater. The key findings are as follows: improved Random Forest, Logistic Regression, AdaBoost, and SVC models were employed to classify the ore spectral images obtained from laboratory experiments. Among the four models, the Random Forest model had the lowest test accuracy, approximately 0.91, while both the Logistic Regression and AdaBoost models achieved slightly higher accuracies, around 0.94. The SVC model demonstrated the best performance, with the highest test accuracy, close to 0.97. Additionally, as the thickness of the PVC board increased, the grade of the primary elements in the test samples exhibited an exponential decline, with a rapid initial attenuation. However, with further increases in PVC board thickness, the downward trend of mineral grade became more gradual, and the rate of change decreased.

Land-use regression model and machine learning algorithms in assessing outdoor noise exposure in Hong KongBackground/Aim: There are epidemiological studies in reporting the association between environmental noise exposure and various health outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases and cognitive decline. However, evidence in using land-use regression (LUR) model in predicting noise is limited and not conclusive, while machine learning algorithms are seemed to be a novel method in improving the explanative power of noise prediction. In this study, random forest (RF) model was adopted to estimate outdoor noise level in Hong Kong and compare the performance between LUR and RF. Methods: A total of 102 measurement sites with 27 environment-related variables were used to estimate the spatial environmental noise variation. Two separate measurements for A-weighted equivalent sound pressure levels over 24 hours (Leq,24h) were conducted at each site during the 2019-2020 period. Land use types, traffic information and geographic information systems were chosen to the related variables for building models. Ordinary linear regression was adopted to be the traditional land-use regression model. Results: The annual mean of 102 measurement sites of Leq,24h was 66.3 dB(A). The proportion of variation (R2) explained by the random forest model in full-frequency noise was higher than the traditional LUR (R2: RF: 0.76, LUR: 0.69). Random forest performed also better in lower root mean squared errors (RF: 2.91 dB(A), LUR: 3.22 dB(A)). Further results on the noise level in different time periods and frequencies will be described in the conference. Conclusion: Random forest model is suggested to be a better alternative in estimating noise exposure. Further study on the application of the model on epidemiological studies can be conducted.