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past answers displaying as lower case

past answers displaying as lower case

by Gavin LaRose -
Number of replies: 3
Hi all,

I've just noted the following oddity (this is with WeBWorK 2.10). A student submitted the following sequence of answers to a problem: Sin(.25x), Sine(.25x), Sin(.25x), and sin(.25x). In the text and database logs these answers are shown with what I assume is the submitted capitalization; in the "past answers" view page, they are displayed as lower case. Understandably, this was found to be confusing by users. I haven't looked to see from whence this behavior springs, but thought it worth mentioning in any case.

Gavin
In reply to Gavin LaRose

Re: past answers displaying as lower case

by Arnold Pizer -
Hi Gavin,

I can duplicate this.  If you look at the page source for past answers you will see
<td style="color:#660000" class="formula">`Sin(x)`</td>
when a student enters "Sin(x)" but the display will show sin(x) so I assume the "formula" class is converting to lower case.  

This is certainly a bug when displaying past answers but may be desirable at other times??  Whoever set up the formula class should look at this.

Arnie

In reply to Gavin LaRose

Re: past answers displaying as lower case

by Arnold Pizer -
A bit more info.  I think this has something to do with MathJax.  First note that MathJax seems to be hardwired into displaying past answers. Switching to images mode does not give images mode in Show past Answers.  If the student enters "Sin(x)", then in Show Past Answers one sees "sin(x)" but if you right click and under "Show Math As" select "Ascii Math Input" you do see Sin(x).

I think another question is whether we want to display past answers in some typeset mode.  I think I would like to see as precisely as possible what the student entered.

Arnie
In reply to Arnold Pizer

Re: past answers displaying as lower case

by Davide Cervone -
Yes, I believe Geoff made past answers be parsed by MathJax a version or so ago. The back ticks around the math means use AsciiMath input format, and that apparently does the lower-case conversion. It is not the formula class that does it, it is the fact that AsciiMath is used for the input mode.

Personally, I prefer to see what the student typed rather than the typeset version, but that may not be the case for everyone, and as Arnie points out, you can get it from the MathJax contextual menu via "Show Math As -> AsciiMath Input".