New Quizzes Formula Questions: Scientific Notation & Margin of Error

[J_Ratliff]

What I want:  A formula question with an answer in scientific notation that allows for a small margin of error in acceptable student responses.

When I create a formula question, there is an option to allow for a small margin of error in acceptable student responses (screenshot:  https://i.imgur.com/Z2blmMs.png ).  I like to set this to 2% so that students who have rounded somewhere in their calculation but have otherwise completed the problem correctly are still marked correct.  That is, if the correct answer is "52.5" but the student enters "52.4", it's still marked correct.

But when I enable the "scientific notation" option, the margin of error option disappears (screenshot:  https://i.imgur.com/JgWpVFs.png ).  So if the correct answer is "2.81*10^7" but the student enters "2.80*10^7", it's marked wrong because it's not exactly what Canvas is expecting.  In this case, I have to manually adjust the student's score on the question, which gets tedious fast for multiple questions and multiple students.

Why does the margin of error option disappear?  Can we get it to not disappear?  Is there a more elegant way of handling this than manually adjusting student scores on each question?

[braung]

Yes, this is exactly what I came here to request.  Canvas quizzed used to handle this with e notation, so you could type 1.23e4, and it handled margins perfectly.  It was great, and I used it all the time.  Then a block on alpha characters was put in.  Now New Quizzes doesn't seem to support it at all.

This really does eliminate a whole class of problems that older versions of Canvas did beautifully.

[fhernan]

This is basic feature that is needed in all STEM courses. I support this request.

[Gregory_Putman]

Hi, I was just sent here by second tier support engineer.  I had a chat with support thinking this was a bug that needed fixing.  Was told it is actually a new/upgraded feature so have to come here and hope for enough social media interaction/up votes to get action on it?!  I'm not sure why anyone would consider making the +/- margin remain in effect with scientific notation turned on wouldn't be correcting poor development?  I'm shocked to learn from above that the older version of quizzed actually accommodated this functionality but the newer quizzes don't!

I'm finding a lot of similar issues with basic functionality that just get relegated to die a slow death on the community discussion boards...  quizzes don't allow for extra credit/bonus questions, very rudimentary grade book does not actually calculate average grades, I can't choose not to have students attach late work to assignment comment section, etc...

Help, Canvas please give this some attention.  STEM educators need this. 

[ChemCzarina]

Since both an absolute or a percent margin of error are provided for an answer that is displayed as a decimal, this must also be provided for a response that is formatted in scientific notation.

In keeping with the formatting scheme when the answer is reported as a decimal,  I would suggest that the margin type be only set for "absolute" when the answer display is set to scientific notation.  If  "3 decimal places" were specified for an answer in scientific notation and if the ± margin of error was set for 2 that this would signify that in the 3rd decimal place that the answer could by off by ±2 (e.g., if the answer was 1.864*10^-56, a margin of error of ±2 would mean 1.864*10^-56 ± 0.002*10^- 56).

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

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