Abstract

The paper is focused on students of Mathematical methods in economics at the Czech university of life sciences (CULS) in Prague. The idea is to create a model of students’ progress throughout the whole course using the Markov chain approach. Each student has to go through various stages of the course requirements where his success depends on the completion of the previous duties. It makes the whole process ideal for usage of Markov chain theory in practice. We show how students’ achievements during the semester affect the final result of the exam in terms of the final grade. The final grade can be understood as an absorbing state of a Markov chain that is terminal and cannot be transitioned from. With the help of Markov chains, the probability of success at the end of the course is shown regarding the students’ behaviour and diligence during the course. This helps to identify weak or critical stages of the entire course and also supplies the planning of time capacity that will be needed to examine all students in the end. The mathematical model is constructed and consequently used in the case study at the second half of the paper.

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