Create arithmetic and significant figures questions in myCourses
- Katrina Casey Kosyk, Miss
In this article:
Arithmetic questions
Arithmetic questions assess students' knowledge and comprehension of mathematics and number theory. This type of question allows you to use variables in your question and answer to randomly generate numbers within the problem. This ensures each student receives a unique question.
As a best practice, we recommend that you create Written Response (WR) question types for arithmetic problems that require users to demonstrate their calculations and show their work. Written Response questions are also advised if you do not plan on making use of the variables for randomly generating problems.
Navigate to the Question Library or the Add/Edit Questions page on a new or existing quiz.
Click New/Add and then select Arithmetic Question from the drop-down menu.
(Optional) Enter a Title.
Question Text: Enter a numerical math question or a word problem in the Question Text box. You can also use variables in this field to randomly generate numbers for your questions.
Image: As with all other question types, you can also insert a picture below the question by clicking Insert an Image. This option is useful for displaying graphs or charts in your question.
Formula: Enter the Formula that your question will require. Ensure all variables are enclosed in curly braces. For example: 2 * ({x} + {y}) - {z}.
The Formula field supports the following operations, functions, and constants:
+, -, *, /, \, ^: Basic arithmetic operators
%: Modulo (remainder) operator
{x}^{y} : x to the power of y
abs({n}) : absolute value of n
cos({n}) : the cosine of n (in radians)
sin({n}) : the sine of n (in radians)
sqr({n}) : the square root of n
tan({n}) : the tangent of n (in radians)
log({n}) : the log base 10 of n
ln({n}) : the log base e of n
atan({n}) : Inverse tangent of n
sec({n}) : Secant of n
cosec({n}) : Cosecant of n
cotan({n}) : Cotangent of n
Factorial({n}) : Factorial of n, (n!)
exp : The power of natural log (e)
pi : 3.14159... (accurate to 50 decimal places)
e : e 2.71828 (accurate up to 50 decimal places)
Click the Test button beside the Formula box to make sure your Formula does not contain errors.
Answer Precision: In this drop-down list, select the number of decimal places needed for the answer. If a student uses one less decimal place, they will receive zero. Students can enter any numbers after the required decimal place and they will still receive full marks unless the enforce precision checkbox is selected.
enforce precision: Select this checkbox to require students to use only the number of decimal places that you selected beside Answer Precision. If they do not round off their answer to the correct number of decimal places, they will receive zero even if their answer is correct.
Tolerance: Choose how accurate in units or percent you want your students’ answers to be for this question.
units +/- #: Click the circle beside this option and type a number in this box if you want your students to receive full marks for answers within a certain number range.
percent +/- #: Click the circle beside this option and type a number in this box if you want your students to receive full marks for answers within a certain percentage.
Units: Enter a unit of measurement in this field if you want your students’ answers to be in a certain unit (e.g. inches, cm, kg). If you type anything in this box, the question will have a units box beside the Answer box on the quiz.
Worth: In this drop-down list, select the percentage of total points students will receive for typing the correct unit beside their answer. For example, if you select 75, students will receive only 75% of the full points for the question if they enter the correct number but do not enter the correct units; they will receive 25% if they get the correct unit without the correct number.
Evaluation Options: There are three options available for evaluating responses for Units for an arithmetic question:
Case Insensitive: Students will get full marks regardless of capital or lower-case letters used for their answer in the Units box.
Case Sensitive: Students will get zero if their answers are not the same case as the answer you typed in the Units box. This is useful if you want students to distinguish between units like mg (milligrams) and Mg (megagrams).
Regular Expression: You can include regular expressions in the Units box and select this option to allow the student more flexibility in specifying the unit. For example, if you specify "kg|kilograms?" in the Units box the student would receive full marks for entering "kg", "kilogram" or "kilograms". For more details on regular expressions, see Create short answer, multi-short answer and fill in the blank questions in myCourses.
Variables: Enter the Name, Min, and Max for the variables in your question. Click Add Variable to display additional fields for the number of variables you are using. For each variable, specify:
Name: Enter the name of the variable. (e.g. x, y, z)
Min: Enter the minimum value of the variable.
Max: Enter the maximum value of the variable. (This may be the same as the minimum value if you want the variable to represent a specific number.)
Decimal Places: In this drop-down list, select the number of decimal places your variable will have. If you set this number to 10, the system will generate numbers between your Min and Max values that have 10 decimal places.
Step: (optional) Enter the increment that the system will use when generating random numbers between the ranges you specified in the Min and Max fields. For example, if you created a variable x with Min: 5, Max: 25, and Step: 5, the system will only generate numbers in increments of 5 between those values (e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25) for x. If you do not enter any number in this box, the system will randomly produce any numbers between the Min and Max values for that variable.
Remove: Click the Remove icon to delete a variable.
This is how a randomly generated question produced by the options in the above screenshots would appear on a quiz:
Significant Figures questions
Significant Figures function similarly to Arithmetic questions, except they allow questions and answers to be written in scientific notation. Options for creating Significant Figures are the same as Arithmetic questions with a few exceptions:
Significant Figures: Enter a number in the drop-down list to indicate the number of non-zero digits before the decimal place that are required in the students’ answers.
Deduct: Select a number from this drop-down list to set the percentage of total points for that question that will be deducted if the student enters the incorrect number of significant figures.
Variables: When specifying your variables, enter the exponents in the boxes to the right of the X 10, in the Min, Max and Step columns.