IntervalGrader #

IntervalGrader grades pairs of numbers enclosed in appropriate brackets. It is intended for use in grading intervals, but can be used to grade other pairs of numbers/formulas with enclosing characters. The following are examples of possible entries:

• [1, 2)
• [0, 1 + pi]

Both the enclosing brackets and the numbers are graded, and a variety of options for partial credit are available.

IntervalGrader is an ItemGrader, and so can be used in lists as desired.

Basic Usage #

To use an IntervalGrader, you can simply call invoke it like a typical grader:

>>> from mitxgraders import *
>>> grader = IntervalGrader(answers='[0, 1]')
>>> grader(None, '[0, 1]') == {'ok': True, 'grade_decimal': 1, 'msg': ''}
True

Answers may be specified by supplying the relevant answer as a string, as in the above example, either through the answers key or through the expect keyword of the customresponse tag. You can also break out the answer into four constituent parts in a list as follows:

>>> from mitxgraders import *
>>> grader = IntervalGrader(answers=['[', '0', '1', ']'])
>>> grader(None, '[0, 1]') == {'ok': True, 'grade_decimal': 1, 'msg': ''}
True

Each individual answer component conforms to the ItemGrader answers specification, so you can do things like the following:

>>> grader = IntervalGrader(
...     answers=[
...         ('[', {'expect': '(', 'msg': 'Your opening bracket is wrong.', 'grade_decimal': 0.5}),
...         '0',
...         '1',
...         (']', {'expect': ')', 'msg': 'Your closing bracket is wrong.', 'grade_decimal': 0.5}),
...     ]
... )
>>> grader(None, '[0, 1)') == {'ok': 'partial', 'grade_decimal': 0.75, 'msg': 'Your closing bracket is wrong.'}
True

Brackets #

You can specify the opening and closing brackets that students may use. Specify each separately as a list of acceptable characters. Entries that do not use these brackets will receive an error message.

>>> grader = IntervalGrader(
...     answers='[0,1]',
...     opening_brackets='([{',
...     closing_brackets=')]}'
... )

The default for opening_brackets is '[(', while the default for closing_brackets is '])'.

Subgrader #

Grading of the two math expressions is performed by a subgrader. The default subgrader is NumericalGrader(tolerance=1e-13, allow_inf=True), which allows infty as an entry, and otherwise sets a tight absolute tolerance on the answers. If this default doesn't suit your requirements, you may specify your own FormulaGrader or NumericalGrader as the subgrader for the expressions. This is particularly useful if you want variables to be allowed to appear in the expressions.

>>> grader = IntervalGrader(
...     answers='[a,b^2]',
...     subgrader=FormulaGrader(variables=['a', 'b'])
... )

Delimiter #

The default delimiter is a comma. However, due to the way expressions are parsed, if your expressions include commas in any location, the answer will not parse correctly. We suggest changing the delimiter to another character, as follows.

>>> grader = IntervalGrader(
...     answers='[0:1]',
...     delimiter=':'
... )

Partial Credit (and how credit is assigned in general) #

Grading works by first using the subgrader to obtain the decimal grade for each expression the student submitted. For each correct expression, the bracket is then inspected. If the bracket is correct, then the score for that expression is kept (or if grade_decimal is set for the bracket, then the score for the expression is multiplied by that entry). If the bracket is incorrect, zero is awarded for that expression. The two resulting scores are then combined to obtain the overall score. If partial_credit is set to False, then the overall score must be 1 for any credit to be awarded. By default, partial_credit is True. When partial credit is turned on, each half of the interval is worth 50% of the overall credit.

To allow for partial credit when incorrect brackets are used, set up alternative answers using the ItemGrader answers specification, as demonstrated in an example above.

Note that no credit is awarded for getting the entries backwards. If this should be graded correct, supply alternative answers to the grader using the ItemGrader answers specification.

Options Listing #

Here is the full list of options specific to an IntervalGrader.

grader = IntervalGrader(
    opening_brackets=str,  # defaykt '[('
    closing_brackets=str,  # default '])'
    delimiter=str,  # default ',', must be one character
    partial_credit=bool  # default True
)