Creating significant figures questions

Significant figures questions require respondents to answer in scientific notation and provide solutions that contain a specified number of significant figures. Math and science courses commonly use this question type. You can ensure each respondent receives a unique question by including set variables that randomly generate scientific notations within the problem.

Create a significant figures question

  1. Enter a Title. Enter a Points value. Select a difficulty level in the Difficulty drop-down list.
  2. Enter your significant figures question in the Question Text field. Enclose variables with curly braces to generate random numbers.

    Note  The number of significant figures automatically calculated in a solution equals the number of significant figures you set for the question.

  3. Click Add a File to upload an image to accompany your question. You can enter a description of the image in the Description field.
  4. Enter the solution's formula in the Formula field and enclose variables in curly braces.
  5. Select how many Significant Figures answers must contain. Select a percentage from the Deduct % of points for incorrect significant figures drop-down list to assign a weighted points value to the correct number of significant figures.
  6. Select a Tolerance option to accept near-accurate, estimated, and rounded answers.
  7. Enter a unit type (mm, cm, grams, inches, etc.) in the Units field to assess if answers include correct units of measurement. Select a percentage from the Worth % of Points drop-down list to assign a weighted points value to the measurement unit.
  8. Set the Evaluation Options for your Units field:
    • Case Insensitive  Auto-grading searches for a matching character pattern in the answer text with or without letter case correctness.
    • Case Sensitive  Auto-grading searches for a matching character pattern in the answer text that must have letter case correctness.
    • Regular Expression  Auto-grading uses meta-characters to search for one or more matching strings in the answer text's character pattern. What you set as meta-character parameters helps determine letter case sensitivity. See Understanding regular expressions for more information.
  9. Click Add Variable to create additional variables. To reduce the number of variables, click the corresponding Remove Entry icon.
  10. Enter each variable Name used in your formula along with their corresponding minimum value in Min, and maximum value in Max.
  11. Enter a number in the Step field to set the system's incrementing steps as it generates numbers from the range set by the Min and Max fields.
  12. Click Test to test your formula. Click Go Back to continue editing your question.
  13. Provide comments and suggestions in the Question Hint and Question Feedback fields.
  14. Click Preview to view your question.
  15. Click Save to return to the main page, click Save and Copy to save and create another significant figures question that retains the copied properties, or click Save and New to continue creating new significant figures questions.

See also

 

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