Webassign and submitting numeric answers?

Question

If the answer to a NUMERIC question is "10", which of the following typed into the answer box will give a correct answer? (numeric answer is 10).

5+5
5*2
abs(-10)
10+10/2
1e1
(10+10)/2
10^1
5+10/2
sqrt(100)
20/2
10

What formats work/don't work?

Answer 1

I don't know which Answer Box you are referring to, but all those formulae are valid representations of the number 10, except for:
(a) 10 + 10/2 which equals 15;
(b) 1e1, in which the E should be capital. Lower case e may be interpreted as the base 2.718281828... of natural logarithms.

Answer 2

Ten of the 11 formats you list should give you an answer of 10.
The fourth one from the top 10+10/2 will give you an answer
of 15.

The real problem I believe you are after is caused from something called round-off error.

Some PC's have word lengths of 32 bits, some newer PC's
are 64 bit computers.

Since, in either case, the word length is limited, the number of digits of significance or accuracy is limited.

Most good hand held calculators have very sophisticated
algorithms that may alter the last few bits to make sure the answer is as accurate as possible.

Browsers (MSIE, Mozilla Firefox etc.) do math or arithmetic and also employ these algorithms.

These algorithms are pretty good now. I don't believe you have to worry too much about 0.99999999 coming up when the real answer was supposed to be 1.00000000.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

If the software is properly programmed,
5+5 should be a correct answer
5*2 should be a correct answer
abs(-10) should be a correct answer
10+10/2 should NOT be a correct answer
1e1 should be a correct answer
(10+10)/2 should be a correct answer
10^1 should be a correct answer
5+10/2 should be a correct answer
sqrt(100) should be a correct answer
20/2 should be a correct answer
10 should be a correct answer

10 + 10/2 comes to fifteen, though - multiplication and division are higher order operations than addition.

Answer 4

All but the following work:
10+10/2
1e1

Answer 5

5+5
5*2
abs(-10)
(10+10)/2
10^1
5+10/2
sqrt(100)
20/2
10



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