Another quiz mode that is organized like test

4 votes

It might also be nice to have a quiz mode pulls a question from each subelement every 10 questions, instead of randomizing from the entire pool. You could also then follow that by pulling a question from each section. That way even the practice quizzing is built more like the actual test.

Not planned Suggested by: C (10 Jan, '19) • Upvoted: 28 Jul, '21 • Comments: 12

Comments: 12

12 Jan, '19
Richard Bateman Admin
I have edited your text to be consistent with question pool semantics; there are 10 subelements with 35 total sections in the Tech and General pools (50 in the extra pool).

I hadn't considered doing a selection in quite this way; it's certainly possible, but it's unclear to me if this would really be better than random. Actually for most people I feel Sequential mode is better because you make sure to see everything. In actual fact random will tend to be fairly close to this anyway.
12 Jan, '19
Richard Bateman Admin
For clarity, if I understand your suggestion there would then be 4 modes: Sequential, Random, Alternating Subelements (each question from a different subelement, so the 1st, 11th, 21st are from T1, etc), and Alternating Sections (each question from a different section, so the 1st, 36th, 71st are from T1A, etc)
12 Jan, '19
C
There is some additional confusion here, as I had not realized that the mode is also repetitious. Is your non-random (is that what you mean by sequential?) also repetitious?
12 Jan, '19
C
The "random", "go through all the sections before repeating" mode is better because it helps you see what sections you are having trouble with faster, because you are exposed to all the sections faster. For instance, if you run the test for 70 questions and only make two errors and they are both in the same section, you might go re-read that stuff before proceeding. Certainly as errors pile up in the same section is telling.
12 Jan, '19
Richard Bateman Admin
It is our opinion that having a non-repeating mode would be pointless, since the intent is to help you learn. That said, it does not specifically repeat -- rather it aims to tailor the difficulty so that you are challenged but not bored.

In effect, if you answered every question correctly it would not repeat until after you had seen every question. The more you miss the more it will repeat. That is the case regardless of what question selection mode is chosen, at least in Quiz mode.
12 Jan, '19
C
Both the "fully random" and "repeat questions you got wrong" slow down the user's ability to self evaluate their knowledge of the different sections. Now, you might suggest the "non-random" mode, but the questions are often much easier when you are exposed to them as a group from the same section. And it will take forever to get through all the sections in non-random mode to evaluate which sections you need to work on.
12 Jan, '19
C
Lets be clear about the difference between repeating questions you get wrong, vs repeatedly drawing questions from the same section when you haven't gone through all the sections, or an uneven distribution of questions from the various sections. I'm more OK with repeating incorrectly answered questions, but much less happy with not going through all the sections.
12 Jan, '19
Richard Bateman Admin
Keep in mind that Study Mode is not *intended* to help the user decide how close they are -- it's intended to teach them the questions. Practice Exams are truly random and will allow them to see how they are doing.
12 Jan, '19
Richard Bateman Admin
We don't *ever* repeat questions without reason; when you miss questions they will be repeated later, but we don't ever hold back on going forward if you aren't missing any questions. Some examples in the next comment:
12 Jan, '19
Richard Bateman Admin
If you answered every question correctly you would not see a repeated question (regardless of random or not) until you've seen the entire pool. If you missed every question 1 time you would see each question twice by the time you reached the end of the pool. It gets a lot more nuanced beyond that, but please believe that we have spent uncountable hours discussing this algorithm and it works *very* well
12 Jan, '19
C
It never repeats questions? I know when I exit and re-enter the app it will repeat at least the last question. And I swear it repeated others, but that could just be the similarity of questions. But my point is more about the question set you have seen after doing say 70 or or 105 questions, these will be very unevenly distributed among the sections. And that does not help the user understand what sections they are best at. I can see no negative to distributing the questions more evenly...
12 Apr, '19
Richard Bateman Admin
There may be a bug where the last 1-5 questions don't always get fully saved -- I'll check into this. It will definitely not repeat more than that, but that's possible.

It's not so much that there is a strong negative, it has more to do with the difficulty of doing so when the current algorithm already works extremely well. I do not see a significant enough benefit to this feature request to justify the time it would take and the additional complexity it would add