A Software Tool for Typesetting Quizzes

 

 

 

The Python data structure for quizzes

When a DocOnce file mydoc.do.txt containing quizzes (and other types of text, like this document) is translated to some format by the doconce format command, a Python list of all the quizzes is created and written to .mydoc.quiz. Each list element represents one quiz as a dictionary. The list corresponding to the quizzes in the current document starts with 

[{'choices': [[u'wrong', u'Helsinki'],
              [u'wrong', u'Drammen'],
              [u'right', u'Oslo'],
              [u'wrong', u'Denmark']],
  'no': 1,
  'question': u'What is the capital of Norway?'},

A more complicated quiz with specification of prefix for the question and one choice (see example above in the question admonition) has explanations in the list for each choice, as well as two more keys (choice prefix and question prefix): 

 {'choice prefix': [u'Answer:', None, None, None],
  'choices': [
    [u'wrong',
     u'Stockholm',
     u"Stockholm is the capital of Sweden, Norway's neighboring country."],
    [u'wrong',
     u'Bergen',
     u'Some people from Bergen may claim so... It is just the second\nlargest city in Norway.'],
    [u'right', u'Oslo'],
    [u'wrong', u'Denmark']],
  'no': 5,
  'question': u'What is the capital of Norway?',
  'question prefix': u''},

The text in the Python list-dictionary data structure is ready-made for being displayed in HTML. Here is an example involving mathematics (MathJax syntax): 

 {'choices': [
   [u'wrong',
    u'5.',
    u'Good attempt, especially when referring to the following story.
\n\n<p>\n<blockquote>\n    An anthropologist was asking a primitive tribesman ab
out arithmetic.\n    When the anthropologist asked, <em>What does two and two ma
ke?</em> the\n    tribesman replied, <em>Five.</em> Asked to explain, the tribes
man said, <em>If I\n    have a rope with two knots, and another rope with two kn
ots, and I\n    join the ropes together, then I have five knots.</em>\n</blockqu
ote>'],
   [u'right',
    u'4.',
    u'Seems trivial, but once upon a time...\n\n<p>\n<center><p><img src="fig/1p1.gif" align="bottom" width=180></p></center>'],
   [u'wrong',
    u'The computation does not make sense when \\( a \\) and \\( b \\) are given without\nunits.',
    u'It is indeed possible to add pure numbers without any units.']],
  'no': 6,
  'question': u'Compute the result of \\( a+b \\) in the case \\( a=2 \\) and \\( b=2 \\).'},

Computer code gets typeset by nice colors by default (using the Pygments package): 

{'choices':
   [[u'wrong',
     u'Yes.',
     u'Not exactly: <code>numpy.zeros</code> creates an array of zeros
, not a list.'],
    [u'wrong',
     u'Yes, provided we write <code>np</code> instead of <code>numpy</code>:\n\n<p>\n\n<!-- code=python (!bc pycod) typeset with pygments style "default" -->\n<div class="highlight" style="background: #f8f8f8"><pre style="line-height: 125%"><span style="color: #008000; font-weight: bold">import</span> <span style="color: #0000FF; font-weight: bold">numpy</span> <span style="color: #008000; font-weight: bold">as</span> <span style="color: #0000FF; font-weight: bold">np</span>\nmylist <span style="color: #666666">=</span> np<span style="color: #666666">.</span>zeros(n)\n</pre></div>\n<p>',
     u'No, this is fully equivalent to the original code, so <code>mylist</code> becomes\nan array, not a list.'],
    [u'right',
     u'No.',
     u'One would need to do <code>mylist = [0]*n</code> or <code>numpy.zeros(n).tolist()</code>.']],
  'no': 8,
  'question': u'We want to create a Python list object of length <code>n</code> where each\nelement is <code>0</code>. Is the following code then what we need?\n\n<p>\n\n<!-- code=python (!bc pycod) typeset with pygments style "default" -->\n<div class="highlight" style="background: #f8f8f8"><pre style="line-height: 125%"><span style="color: #008000; font-weight: bold">import</span> <span style="color: #0000FF; font-weight: bold">numpy</span>\nmylist <span style="color: #666666">=</span> numpy<span style="color: #666666">.</span>zeros(n)\n</pre></div>\n<p>'}

The keys in the dictionaries in this data structure are