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

[David B. <dav...@gm...>]

Hi Siddarth,

> Also, I would like if the question generation happens for every wave instead
> of happening once in a game.

The question list is generated at the beginning of the game.  The
waves affect things like the background image and the speed of the
comets, but not the questions.  The question-generation code is in
mathcards.[ch], which doesn't know anything about waves.

Depending on a few config file variables (see e.g. ~/.tuxmath/options
or any of the files under data/missions/),  answered or missed
questions are handled differently (I apologize about some of the
variable names, which now seem rather confusing)

PLAY_THROUGH_LIST (boolean) - if set to 1 ("true"), correctly-answered
questions are removed from the list, so that the game ends in victory
when there are no remaining questions.  If set to 0 ("false"), the
questions are reinserted in a random question and the game goes on
indefinitely ("arcade mode").

REPEAT_WRONGS (boolean) - controls the equivalent behavior for
questions the player misses (i.e. the ones that hit the igloos).
However, for this one, 1 means the questions are reinserted, and 0
means they are discarded, the opposite of the behavior for
PLAY_THROUGH_LIST.  This is set to 1 for all of the bundled lessons.

COPIES_REPEATED_WRONGS (int) controls how many copies of the missed
question get put back in.  For example, if this is set to
2, if a player misses "3 + 3 = ?", he/she will have to answer it twice
correctly after that to "win" the game.  This provides a minimal form
of adaptive learning, but it could be extended to include questions
closely related to the question that was missed.



> The reason is to account for learner's
> performance of the past waves for question generation of the present wave.
> This wouldn't affect a Math command training lesson, but on tux missions and
> for arcade games, this can make a difference in the question selection.

All very valid goals!  It seems clear that our current scheme isn't
sufficiently flexible to do everything needed for your project.  If
you are going to have "intra-game/inter-wave" feedback, we need to add
some functions to mathcards to support generating and inserting
additional questions during the game.

Best,

-- 
David Bruce

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