THE EFFECT OF MATHEMATICS ABILITY ON PERFORMANCE IN PRINCIPLES OF ACCOUNTING

Omotosho, Gabriel Akinlolu    

Department of Natural Science,

Nasarawa State Polytechnic, Lafia

Email: jogbodoakinlolu@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The study of mathematics provides an excellent basis for the applied techniques of accountancy and finance although most accounting educators readily acknowledge that mathematical ability has a significant impact on student performance in accounting courses, to date no statistical research has appeared that numerically quantifies the effect. The present research estimates the incremental effect of mathematics ability on student performance in principles of accounting by means of regressing student performance in a principles course on the student’s score on 24-question mathematics pre-test, as well as on other determinants of performance such as Grade Point Average. The overall effect of mathematic ability is estimated, and also the effect of mathematic ability in specific areas of mathematics such as proportions and percentages. It is found that while each one of the mathematic score variables is highly significant according to the standard t-statistic test, the overall explanatory power of the regression equation, as measured by its R-squared, is not increased very much in a numerical sense by the addition of any one of them to a regression equation that already includes as an explanatory variable Grade Point Average. This finding does not imply that mathematics is unimportant to student performance in accounting, but rather that mathematics ability is so highly correlated with other academic ability indicators that disentangling the effect of math ability from the effect of other ability indicators is statistically problematic. Nevertheless, the pre-test itself can be utilized to conveniently identify at-risk students in principles of accounting courses, especially for those with measured low arithmetical and percentages and proportions skills.