Re: [Tuxmath-devel] GSoC project on "Personalized, adaptive game-play to improve learning in Tuxmath"

[Siddharth K. <sid...@gm...>]

Hi all,

Adding Bart to the loop. :)

I added a new post on question generation, but it still needs work. I posted
it since I won't be able to update it before a couple of days (i will be
travelling).

Tim - The documentation for the "school mode" would be helpful.

David - I had a brief idea of the code for generating questions. Thanks for
the details.

Thanks,
Siddharth

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 11:02 PM, David Bruce <dav...@gm...>wrote:

> Hi Siddarth,
>
> >> 4. In your section on "modifying the game variables," certainly the
> speed
> >> is
> >> an important parameter. But a more interesting---and more conceptually
> >> challenging---issue is how to decide which _type_ of problems to pose.
> Is
> >> the
> >> kid ready for addition facts up to 10, or should we stick with 0 to 5?
> How
> >> can
> >> you tell when the kid is ready for multiplication?
> >
> > There is an interesting approach Animalwatch (It's a tutor for
> pre-algebra
> > mathematics) uses for this which is described here Using the student
> model
> > to control problem difficulty. I am thinking of using a approach on
> similar
> > lines, will post it shortly.
>
> I don't know how much you've looked at how tuxmath generates math
> question lists, but basically a lesson file sets a series of criteria
> for questions:
>
> - allowed math operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)
> - ranges of allowed numbers for operands
> - whether to allow negative numbers
> - format of question (i.e. 1 + 1 = ?, 1 + ? = 2, or ? + 1 = 2)
>
> and so forth.  There are also some variables related to how answered
> questions are handled - in the "lesson" games, correctly answered
> questions are considered "done", and the lesson ends with a win when
> all the questions have been handled correctly.  In the "arcade" games,
> all questions get reinserted into the list so the game goes on
> indefinitely until the player runs out of lives.  In both modes,
> questions which are not answered correctly get reinserted so the
> player sees them again.  There is an option to reinsert multiple
> copies of missed questions so as to give extra practice on those
> facts.  Finally, the code contains functions to support the use of the
> just the "missed questions" from the previous game as the question
> list for the next game, although we've never implemented a way to use
> this feature.  So, some of these features might be useful in your
> project, but they might not be sufficiently flexible for your needs.
>
> What tuxmath does not currently provide is the reading of a list of
> arbitrary functions from a text file.  I think we may want to do
> something like that for your project.
>
> I read your blog, and am eager to hear more about specifics, or to
> help you work them out.  It seems to me that there are at least two
> ways in which this adaptive instruction can be applied:
> 1. Within the same math game, use the player's initial performance to
> adjust the subsequent questions.
> 2. For subsequent games, adjust the questions based on results from
> previous games.
>
>
> >> 5. Given this tuxmath-as-the-teacher mode of thinking, do we need to
> think
> >> somewhat about creating mechanisms to explicitly teach, rather than just
> >> let
> >> them practice things they've already been taught?
>
> Yes - I've thought for some time that this was a shortcoming of the
> program.  The only "teaching" is when we show the answer when the
> igloo gets hit, plus the factoring hints we put in at the start of
> each level in factoroids.  But there isn't any illustration of the
> concepts of math.  There are plenty of ways that new activities could
> be designed for these purposes, e.g. having Tux combine groups of fish
> to illustrate addition, or having him build stacks of ice blocks in a
> grid layout to illustrate multiplication.
>
> I think the existing games have been shaped a lot by the ages of our
> kids at the time when the games were written.  My daughter was a
> second-grader when I started trying to make Bill's original comet game
> more flexible, and she was a fourth-grader doing a lot of factoring
> stuff when I proposed the factoroids game.  Maybe we need someone with
> pre-school or kindergarten kids to get interested in coding up a new
> activity.
>
> David Bruce
>