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Mathematics is a discipline that appears on the syllabus of many courses, including courses in engineering, where it is essential to the formation of all future engineers, whatever their field of study and work. Despite that, engineering students tend to reveal difficulties with course units based on mathematics. The factors that influence learning mathematics have been the subject of study for several researchers around the world. Researchers attempt to identify variables that explain mathematics achievement, but fail to address university students. In this paper, an exploratory study based on engineering students of University of Minho, concerning their grades in statistics and numerical methods curricular units is presented. The aim of this study is to explore the mathematics achievement in the process of learning mathematical concepts. The preliminary results show that gender is an unexpected and significant factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]