Macromedia FLASH EXPERTS --> Look In

[phaty]

lol he should get paid ffor this

[Triad121]

thanx for the update catbert303

[catbert303]

Originally posted by enemem
looks like you have been appointed official 'maths program creator'

how about automatically continuing to the next question (rather than having to click button) after a short wait and focusing the text field once the question appears? then the whole thing could be used entirely via the keyboard.

just some thoughts...

- n.

It looks like it doesn't it

Again, some very nice ideas, i've tried to make a new version which can be used just with the keyboard, it just needs one button at the start to be clicked to "focus" the actual movie from then on it should work just by typing in the answer and pressing return.

Same address as before...

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic2...math_quiz.html

[phaty]

u dont give up easy do u ,


man this is sweet.

[enemem]

nice one! I could think of some more features but this looks pretty good

if it gets used in schools everywhere you could be rich!!

- n.

[hansel]

i know this is a flash forum.......
so dont all jump on my case
but....................
its interesting to see the direction of this thread is all about the 'flash' of this math tutorial program and not about the algebra aspect.....
which is the point of the tutorial.....
its the 'technology for the sake of technology' issue
why not discuss whether simply asking question like what is 'x' in 15=3x+3 is the best way to learn
how about using flash to 'show' algebra?
the idea of a variable like 'x'....how do you explain that to someone who doesnt get it.....
maybe flash can be used to illustrate this
i tutored math to in college......algegra to be exact
and its a difficult concept for some people who cant think 'abstractly'

yes........functionality of buttons and text box focus and enter keys is important
but......i hope as much thought goes into the idea of teaching and less depends on how cool it is that the tutorial can be in 'flash'
besides.....everything discussed so far can be achieved with basic html forms and some javascript or vbscript

good luck

[enemem]

<hansel>

what you say is completely true and a very important point to consider for that particular project. but in the end the original question was how to build this particular 'question/answer' scenario, so you can't really fault the people who have answered.

(I suppose this is a study aid, for people who want to practise, rather than a learning aid).

- n.

[phaty]

some good points han, but em has a point too, this was more of a learning curve thing rather then a development of a real "game"

[catbert303]

Originally posted by hansel
i know this is a flash forum.......
so dont all jump on my case
but....................
its interesting to see the direction of this thread is all about the 'flash' of this math tutorial program and not about the algebra aspect.....
which is the point of the tutorial.....
its the 'technology for the sake of technology' issue
why not discuss whether simply asking question like what is 'x' in 15=3x+3 is the best way to learn
how about using flash to 'show' algebra?
the idea of a variable like 'x'....how do you explain that to someone who doesnt get it.....
maybe flash can be used to illustrate this
i tutored math to in college......algegra to be exact
and its a difficult concept for some people who cant think 'abstractly'

yes........functionality of buttons and text box focus and enter keys is important
but......i hope as much thought goes into the idea of teaching and less depends on how cool it is that the tutorial can be in 'flash'
besides.....everything discussed so far can be achieved with basic html forms and some javascript or vbscript

good luck

I agree entirely about this probably not being the best way to learn algebra, it is more of an algebra test. This originally started as a demo file that only took about 10 minutes to throw together and since then i've just added some simple alterations to improve the functionality. I haven't really had time to make serious changes, although heres some thoughts on improvements.

Maybe it could be split into 2 sections, the first could explain the concepts of rearranging the equation. Here for example you could make some animations to illustrate rearranging the equation to make x the subject. Then in the second section you could quiz the users, perhaps in the form of some kind of game, maybe something like this....

have a character standing under a tree with a basket, apples with equations written on them fall from the tree and the user has to try to catch the apples where x = 4 for example and avoid the ones that have a different answer. actually I quite like that idea I might have a go at that tonight

[Triad121]

catbert303, need your help again.

how could I make it so that there are lots of questions, lets say about 30-60 questions which are stored in the flash movie,

but I want it so that everytime the user wants to test themselves, it displays 30 random questions everytime, and can only let the user answer 30 questions out of the 30-60 q's.

how would I do this?

[catbert303]

Hi,

In the movie the questions are stored in the mathQuiz array as objects like this...

mathQuiz[0] = {q: "3x + 1 = 4", a: 1};

a random question is picked by

index = Math.floor(Math.random() * mathQuiz.length);
question = mathQuiz[index].q;

and once the question has been asked it is removed from the array by

mathQuiz.splice(index, 1);

when the answer is checked, it is also checking to see if there are any items left in the array

if (mathQuiz.length == 0) {
gotoAndStp("end");
}

to solve your problem, you need to add all the questions to the array

so it goes up to

mathQuiz[59] = {q: "some equation", a: answer};

and have the condition to end the quiz as being something like

if (mathQuiz.length < 30) {
gotoAndStop("end");
}

hope this helps.

side note...

i've done a little work on making the quiz into a game as mentioned above, it's just about working now but it is really hard... you need to be very quick to work out the answers It's proved to me how bad I am at doing maths in my head

[Triad121]

thanx again for the help catbert303,

sorry but i've got another question,

how could i make it so that you would need to enter to parts of an answer in to get the question correct, e.g.

ALGEBRAIC FRACTIONS

simplify as possible the following:

y/2y

enter answer [ ] <-- enter top part of answer
enter answer [ ] <-- enter bottom part of answer

do you know how to do this?

and lastly how do you make it so that there are more than one correct answer to a question? e.g.

factorise x² + 5x = answer is x(x+5) or x(5+x)

[catbert303]

I'll have a look see what I can do about that tonight, should be possible to get something like that working

[Triad121]

thanx

[hansel]

i agree that you guys have been discussing more of a test than a lesson.......i like the idea of having both components
i think flash is a great medium for this

good luck!

[LEXGRAPHICS]

NO PROBLEM CATBERT. keep up the good work man

[catbert303]

I've had a go at some factorising stuff, it's a little more complex than just solving the equation, since there are so many ways the answer could be typed in that are all correct. for example with or without spaces. Heres some bits of code, hopefully I can get time to build an fla soon.

frame 1:
factorArray = new Array();
factorArray[0] = {q: "x^2 + 5x", a1: "x(x+5)", a2: "x(5+x)"};
factorArray[1] = {q: "x^2 - 9", a1: "(x-3)(x+3)", a2: "(x+3)(x-3)"}

I was hoping the html <sup> tag would work in a flash text box for the superscripts, but it doesn't seem to so I guess ^'s will have to be used I put in 2 possible answers for each question, I guess you could also include things like (x+5)x if you wanted. Note: the answers are written with NO spaces, this is because we can do this...

function cleanAnswer(ans) {
	answerString = "";
	ans = ans.toLowerCase();
	for (i = 0; i < ans.length; i++) {
		char = ans.substr(i, 1);
		if (char != " ") {
			answerString += char;
		}
	}
	return answerString;
}

This function should when called convert the answer to lower case and strip out any spaces.

now onto frame 2:
index = Math.floor(Math.random() * factorArray.length);

question = factorArray[index].q;
correctAnswer1 = factorArray[index].a1;
correctAnswer2 = factorArray[index].a2;

Selection.setFocus("answer");

stop();
pretty much the same as the earlier files, except now there are 2 answers. These will be checked when submit is pressed.

submit button:
either as a on (release) or on (KeyPress "<Enter>")

answer = cleanAnswer(answer);
if (answer == correctAnswer1 || answer == correctAnswer2) {
gotoAndPlay("correct");
score++;
} else {
gotoAndPlay("wrong");
}

the function cleanAnswer is called to try to get the entered answer in the correct format and then the answer is checked against the possible correct answers.
Well it's by no means perfect, but I hope it helps a bit, i'll try to get an fla together with some of the other things you mentioned

[gcy80]

wouldn't it will be better if those questions and answers created in xml file?
So we can just by changing or adding questions and answers to that xml file, and everything goes fine.

[enemem]

catbert303,

just some more ideas for the development I agree with the external datasource idea too. Working towards that - perhaps store the answers in an array, so that you can have a variable amount rather than just two?

your second frame would then change:

correctAnswers = factorArray[index].a; // array

and you would use a function to check whether the answer is correct (cycle through array, return true/false) and just call that in your if-statement.

one more idea for the cleanAnswer function: strip out "*" as well. if you want to, why not have an array of 'illegal' characters that you check for, will make the code easier to change...

just some thoughts.

I've just had another idea too how about an interactive equation project, where you can drag parts of the equation to the other side of the '=' and it updates automatically?

have fun - n.

[Triad121]

thanx catbert303,

that wud be great if you could create an .fla for it, seeing that im very new to all of this coding, i don't fully understand it.