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

[Tim H. <ho...@wu...>]

Hi Siddarth,

I'd also add that perhaps it might be best to confine this to "training 
academy." The intent behind the arcade games is that everyone is on equal 
footing, so getting the high score for your class represents an "absolute" 
achievement rather than "you did very well given what we expected of you" 
(i.e., what the Bayesian algorithm decided to set as problems). But for the 
training academy, the latter is indeed probably more appropriate .

Best,
--Tim


On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 11:55:44 am David Bruce wrote:
> 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,