[LON-CAPA-users] Having an equation or a range as a response

[Gerd Kortemeyer]

Hi,

On Jan 22, 2012, Seema Ali wrote:

>  Where can I get a list of Maxima questions that Lon Capa uses? 

A few things from MAXIMA we have packaged nicely in <formularesponse> and <mathresponse> (with a "switch" for R or MAXIMA). But, using the &cas-command, you can call any function within MAXIMA, http://maxima.sourceforge.net/documentation.html . I usually try things out on the command-line first (just running MAXIMA in a terminal) before putting them into LON-CAPA.

BTW, we also have GeoGebra support, which we currently do not "advertise" in the templates. Students can enter graph sketches, which are then graded according to rules.

> Oh and I also tested:
> 
> x^3 = 125 and it failed on both which is good if you're looking for linear solutions.
> 

That's apparently because MAXIMA wants to solve this in the complex plane:

(%i3) solve(x^3=125,x);
                  5 sqrt(3) %i - 5        5 sqrt(3) %i + 5
(%o3)        [x = ----------------, x = - ----------------, x = 5]
                         2                       2

I guess I need to work in some way to tell MAXIMA if it should stay real.

- Gerd.