[Tex/LaTex] Questions on designing a dynamic database of exercises

automationexercisesexsheetsprobsoln

Almost all packages to handle exercises allow us to attach/retrieve meta-data to/from each exercise.

Some things one might want when handling exercises are:

Filter exercises according to their meta-data.
Select random exercises from an external file.
Have dynamic data associated to each exercise.

The first and second things are already addressed by the packages exsheets and probsoln.

What I'm referring to by "dynamic data" is data that can change with time. For example a key tused to store the number of times an exercise have been used in past documents.

As far as I know, this have not been covered yet.

Now, let me be more specific:

The problems to solve

Say I want to use the exsheets package to handle the questions for my exams. So I do something like \DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}, where lsused/lyused are last semester/year the question have been used and tused is as explained above.

I can choose random questions by topic (by putting them in separate external files). So I have one file for each topic, and in each file questions like

\begin{question}[ID=L1]
\SetQuestionProperties{difficulty=hard,topic=logic,lsused=1,lyused=2011,tused=3}
Proof that this is not our first very hard question.
\end{question}

I need to see the IDs of the questions in order to decide which to keep and which to discard. Let's call this the "selection stage". Say my exam must have 9 questions, so I do something like:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{exsheets}

\DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}
\DebugExSheets{true}

\begin{document}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=easy]{logic}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=medium]{arithmetic}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=hard]{geometry}
\end{document}

Notice that if I compile this file many times I'll probably get a different set of questions each time.

Here is where the first problem arises: I'm not sure if we can filter questions according user-defined properties. It will be useful to avoid questions by ID, for example some:

\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=easy,noIDs={L5,L6}]{logic}

And, even if we can do so, it would be better to have some way to enter in a "preliminary stage" which allow us to keep the exercises obtained in the last compilation (say by storing their IDs and the topic/file they belong to in an external file) on the "selection stage" and just change the questions we do not want.

Suppose that the package which solves all this problems is called upackage. And that it provides ways to say which stage we are in. Suppose all the unknown commands that appear hereafter are provided by this package. So in the first stage I do something like:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{exsheets}
\usepackage{upackage}

\DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}
\DebugExSheets{true}

\begin{document}
\setstage{selection}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=easy]{logic}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=medium]{arithmetic}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=hard]{geometry}
\end{document}

Suppose that after compile this, I like all the questions except the second geometry question. So I do:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{exsheets}
\usepackage{upackage}

\DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}
\DebugExSheets{true}

\begin{document}
\setstage{preliminary}
\changequestion{number=2,topic=geometry}
\end{document}

What I expect from this is, the same set of questions I got before but with a different second geometry question. And if still do not like it, I just compile again. This is a bit complex since it must keep track of the unwanted questions list. Here I assuming that file names and topics are the same.

Once I decide that the 9 questions are fine, then I just do:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{exsheets}
\usepackage{upackage}

\DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}

\begin{document}
\setstage{final}
\end{document}

And I get the questions this time without displaying their IDs. And here is where the other problem comes. Suppose that the package allow us to set \currentsemester and \currentyear (which by default must be \year). I would like that when the document is marked as final, the properties lsused, lyused get updated in the corresponding questions, as well as the tused which must be incremented in one. This will be useful to set, say, a \tolerance. For example if I set \tolerance{2} and I'm in the first semester of 2013, this will avoid including questions used in the past year.

So the process to build an exam should be, in short:

Selection:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{exsheets}
\usepackage{upackage}

\DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}
\DebugExSheets{true}

\currentsemester{1}
\currentyear{2013}
\tolerance{2}

\begin{document}
\setstage{selection}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=easy]{logic}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=medium]{arithmetic}
\includequestions[random=3,difficulty=hard]{geometry}
\end{document}

Preliminary:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{exsheets}
\usepackage{upackage}

\DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}
\DebugExSheets{true}

\currentsemester{1}
\currentyear{2013}
\tolerance{2}

\begin{document}
\setstage{preliminary}
\changequestion{number=2,topic=geometry}
\end{document}

until the second geometry question is acceptable.

Final:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{exsheets}
\usepackage{upackage}

\DeclareQuestionProperty{difficulty,topic,lsused,lyused,tused}
\DebugExSheets{true}

\currentsemester{1}
\currentyear{2013}
\tolerance{2}

\begin{document}
\setstage{final}
\end{document}

Questions

My questions, is it plausible to achieve things like this with TeX/LaTeX? Is there some other approach? How to solve these problems?

Best Answer

Sorry (again) for un-digging a (very) old topic.

If I may add something to the previous answer, there are (at least) two programs who were designed to do that (opensource, with a GUI). So, this answers the "other approach" part, not the "pure LaTeX" one.

TeXamator (disclaimer: I am the author)

Basically, it will go recursively through one specific folder to find your .tex files and all your exercises in them. You can then click on a file containing exercises and it will compile it on-the-fly to show you the exercises : add the ones you want to your final document and then export it (to a tex or a pdf).

TeXoMaker (disclaimer: I am not the author ;))

This one works almost like the previous one except that you first have to create a database of exercises and only then can you use it.

In both softwares you have a "search" functionnality so you can use metadata if you want and, for example, display only difficult exercises.

At least in TeXamator you can add randomly selected exercises (maybe in TeXoMaker also, but I can't say for sure).

Hope this helps !

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] indenting exercises

There are lots of ways to do this. A simple way using just an enumerate environment

\begin{enumerate}
  \item[5] This is the question.
  \item[] This is where the answer goes
\end{enumerate}

or perhaps you want your own environment; I've posted a few different options below- take your pick, or perhaps build one based off one of them.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{calc}

\newcommand{\question}[1]{\item[#1]}
\newcommand{\answer}{\item[]}
\newenvironment{questionandanswer}[2]{\enumerate\setcounter{enumi}{#2-1}\item#1\item[]}{\endenumerate}
\newenvironment{anotherapproach}{\enumerate}{\endenumerate}


\begin{document}

\begin{questionandanswer}{This is the question.}{5}
  This is where the answer goes
\end{questionandanswer}

\begin{anotherapproach}
  \question{5} This is the question.
  \answer This is where the answer goes
\end{anotherapproach}

\begin{enumerate}
  \item[5] This is the question.
  \item[] This is where the answer goes
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

If you want to change the indentation of the enumerate environment, then the enumitem package is the most sensible way to go:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist[enumerate]{leftmargin=*}

[Tex/LaTex] Hbox overfull: automatic linebreaks on spaces

you've already separated the different elements, providing spaces between the distinct equations comprising each language and separately coding these equations as math (even though the space between the first two is, probably inadvertently, omitted). unfortunately, these spaces don't fall in a place that is optimal for tex to break the line.

the ultimate goal is for what is presented to be understood.

there are two parts to this recommendation.

first, the words "milk, curry, rice" are, as you say, constants, and as such should be in a text font, preferably not italic in this context, even though they're part of the math expression. as coded in your original, they are typeset as strings of variables multiplied together. these could be coded as \mathrm{<word>}, but that doesn't help with line breaking. it also wouldn't leave spaces after the commas, although in this situation, whether spaces are visible there or not wouldn't be misunderstood by a reader.

another way to approach these is to recognize them as text, and input them as, for example,

$\mathcal{C}_o=\{\text{milk, curry, rice}\}$

but this doesn't help with line breaking either, since in this context, the only "allowable" break is after the equals sign.

so, second part of suggestion, take advantage of the fact that a reader isn't likely to misunderstand what is meant if a line is broken within that string of constants, and (temporarily) terminate the math after the opening brace, and reinstate it for the ending brace:

$\mathcal{C}_o=\{$milk, curry, rice$\}$

to illustrate, using a forced line break for the "all math" instance, compare these two lines:

enter image description here

here's the input that produced the image:

\begin{itemize}
\item The language of enquiry $\mathcal{L}$ is given by
$\mathcal{C}_o=\{milk, curry, rice\}$,\\
$\mathcal{R}_o=\{TastesHot, IsWhite, ContainsSpice, ContainsSugar\}$,
$\mathcal{F}_o=\{\}$.
\item The language of enquiry $\mathcal{L}$ is given by
$\mathcal{C}_o=\{$milk, curry, rice$\}$,
$\mathcal{R}_o=\{$TastesHot, IsWhite, ContainsSpice, ContainsSugar$\}$,
$\mathcal{F}_o=\{\}$.
\end{itemize}

(by the way, that's hardly a minimal example.)