The literature in engineering and statistics is abounding in techniques for detecting and properly processing anomalous observations in the data. Most of these techniques have been developed in the framework of static models and it is only in recent years that we have seen attempts that address the presence of outliers in nonlinear time series. For a target tracking problem described by a nonlinear state-space model, we propose the online detection of outliers by including an outlier detection step within the standard particle filtering algorithm. The outlier detection step is implemented by a test involving a statistic of the predictive distribution of the observations, such as a concentration measure or an extreme upper quantile. We also provide asymptotic results about the convergence of the particle approximations of the predictive distribution (and its statistics) and assess the performance of the resulting algorithms by computer simulations of target tracking problems with signal power observations.

Recent research has shown that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) create barriers for students with disabilities. Not taking into account their needs in the design, production or delivery of MOOCs may be one of the main causes behind this. It leads to poor compliance with suitable learning designs and web accessibility standards, as well as a lack of knowledge about the students’ needs. The objective of our research is to analyze the learning performance of the students in MOOCs on topics related to Design for All, offered in an Open edX-based platform. Accessibility support was conceived from the outset, including compliance of both the platform and the learning resources with the WCAG 2.1 accessibility standard, and with a subset of the principles of Universal Design for Learning. Additionally, students were consulted on their accessibility needs and preferences, following publicly available modeling schemes and previous research. From a sample of 765 students, who completed at least one of the graded assessment activities of the course, a multilevel multiple logistic regression model was fitted. Based on that model, the results indicate that: a) users of screen readers and users of captions show a statistically significant positive association with a good performance when compared to students with no preferences, with an odds ratio of, respectively, OR = 13.482 and OR = 13.701; b) students who have low vision or very low vision show a significant negative association with a good performance when compared to users of screen readers and to users of captions, with OR = 26.817 and OR = 27.254, respectively.