WeBWorK Problems

Reusing seeds across multiple problems

Reusing seeds across multiple problems

by Randall Pruim -
Number of replies: 3

I'd like to have the option to re-use a seed across multiple problems for the same student (but different seeds for different students).  Is this easy to do (short of manually assigning the seeds myself)?

Here is a high level description of my use case: I have three problems that ask students to do essentially the same task by three slightly different methods.  They are long enough (over 20 fill-in boxes each where they provide me several intermediate results) that I'd like to keep them as separate problems.  Also, some instructors might want to use some but not all of the problems.  

To make it clear that each method gives the same result, I'd like students to apply the method to the same randomly generated scenario in each problem.


In reply to Randall Pruim

Re: Reusing seeds across multiple problems

by Robert Mařík -
You can go to Hmwk sets editor, click the number like 300/300 in the column "edit asigned users", and then "Edit data for xlogin". Here you can set the seed manually for each single problem for the user xlogin.

If there are more than 10 users and if you have access to the database, I would consider a script which grabs the seed from the first problem a populates the same seed to the other problems for the same user.
In reply to Randall Pruim

Re: Reusing seeds across multiple problems

by Glenn Rice -
You can use the problem set version number for this purpose. That is different for each student and assignment, but is the same within a given assignment. You then use that to seed each problem by adding SRAND($psvn) to the beginning of each problem.
In reply to Glenn Rice

Re: Reusing seeds across multiple problems

by Vivien Altwasser -
Sorry to be rather late on this topic. Is it possible to have a sets seed for another set in the same course or to use anothers set seed? Thus it would be possible to repeat the same question with multiple choice questions out of an array in another set without repeating the exact same one.