How the NMSU Program Pathfinder works

Visitors answer four questions on a touchscreen. The kiosk scores every NMSU program against those answers and shows the best three.

1. Screen flow

Solid arrows are the normal path. Dashed arrows are shortcuts: a hobby search choice fills in the interest answer and moves on to Question 3, and an under-18 visitor can tap "I'm also looking at degree programs" on the 4-H screen to continue at Question 2. Under-18 visitors who reach Results restart instead of seeing the lead form.

2. How the algorithm works

match() scores every record in PROGRAMS (147 in all: the core catalog, the Phase 2 and Phase 3 additions, and the College of ACES catalog). Master's and doctoral programs are tagged as such, so Question 3 can ask for either. The points are:

Answer	Points
Interest equals the program's area (or "not sure": every program gets the same +1, so it changes nothing)	+12
Level, by closeness to the answer (see the table below). "Not sure" gives every program +2.	+8 / +5 / +3 / +1 / 0
Place, "Fully online": the program is online	+6
Place, "Las Cruces campus": the campus name includes Las Cruces (on campus or hybrid)	+6
Place, "Close to home": a program at a community campus, not online and not Las Cruces	+4
"Close to home" and the program is at this county office's mapped campus	+3
Place, "Show everything": every program gets the same +1	+1
Audience: adult with an online or hybrid program	+3
Audience: transfer student with a bachelor's, or parent with a bachelor's	+2 / +1
Audience: veteran (the rule is +1 for any program that is not graduate; see the note below)	+1
Hobby search: the program is the one the chosen hobby maps to	+25

Level closeness

Instead of requiring an exact level, each answer has an ordered list of levels. A program earns 8, 5, 3, 1 or 0 points depending on where its level falls in that list.

Visitor chose	Order (+8, +5, +3, +1, 0)
Under 1 year	Certificate, Associate, Bachelor's, Master's, Ph.D.
About 2 years	Associate, Bachelor's, Certificate, Master's, Ph.D.
About 4 years	Bachelor's, Associate, Master's, Certificate, Ph.D.
Master's degree	Master's, Ph.D., Bachelor's, Associate, Certificate
Doctoral / Ph.D.	Ph.D., Master's, Bachelor's, Associate, Certificate

From scores to the top three

Tie-break. A small amount from 0 to 0.4 is added to every score. It is computed from the program name and campus plus a random number chosen when the visitor starts, so it only separates equal scores, and the order stays the same for the whole visit.
One card per program name. Some names appear more than once (Computer Science on campus and online, for example). The kiosk walks down the sorted list and keeps the first record for each name, until it has three.
The three cards. The first is the "best match" and the other two are alternates.
The full list below the cards. This is a separate step. It lists every program in the chosen interest area, sorted by level closeness and then alphabetically. Place and audience are not used there, and each campus's version of a program is listed.

What the weights mean in practice

Interest is worth the most for a single answer, but it is not a hard filter. A program in the wrong area that matches both the level (+8) and the place (+6 or more) scores 14 or more, which beats a program in the right area (+12) that misses on level and place. That is how an off-interest program can show up without any warning. A hobby search choice (+25) overrides this for one named program.

Answers that give every program the same points ("not sure" on interest, level or place, and the veteran bonus) do not change the ranking. They only change the totals.

3. Try the matching score

Change the answers. Each bar segment shows the points a program earned from one answer. The first three cards with a new name are what a visitor would see. Like the kiosk, the list shows each program name once, so a second record with the same name is left out.