[samigo-team] Calculated Question Type & Math Functions

[Sean Baker]

Hey all,

Just a quick question about where we all want to go with the calculated 
question type - there have been varied commits to the base switching 
back and forth between a couple of (math) function name definitions, the 
ones which I've paid most attention to being those surrounding 
definition of logarithms.  My suspicion is that the issue stems from 
Java's definition of a base-10 logarithm as "LOG10", a base-e logarithm 
as "LOG", and the fact that the original interpreter simply passed these 
function names directly back to Java for handling.  Since, there have 
been multiple iterations putting in "LOG" to mean a base-10 logarithm 
and "LN" for a base-e one, as well a few variations on this.  As the 
questions are stored uninterpreted, this ultimately poses a data 
discrepancy issue and before we deploy here I wanted to get a sense for 
what the long term will look like -- do we want to use the more 
programmatic terms ("LOG10" and "LOG" to mean base-10 and base-e 
respectively), or do we want things to act more like a calculator for 
the user and use "LOG" and "LN" for those?  My own preference would be 
for the latter as I think it will be more intuitive for users to 
understand the data entry, but /a/ decision is more important than the 
actual decision made at this point.

And of course, if anyone has noticed any other function names switching 
between versions, please say something!

Thanks everyone!

-- 
Ne Desit Virtus,

Sean R. Baker
1LT, MS
United States Army
Office #: (301) 319-0712
Email: sean.baker at usuhs.edu

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