Monday, December 28, 2009

POTW Beta

As I hinted toward recently, I was thinking about running problems of the week. Well now I have created a beta test of the system to run over winter break. I am calling on you to help me test in the time between all your fun winter break activities. If you are a current member of VMT, go to http://activities.tjhsst.edu/vmt/pages/training/index.php after logging in to the wiki and you should be able to access the problems by clicking on the link that says POTW Beta. If you are not a member of the TJ math team, that link should direct you to a login/registration page where you can register for an account and log in as a guest. This beta will be open until the real POTW starts.

A note about the interface: All of the answers for this beta are positive integers. Therefore, there is no need to use the preview button. That is there so that if a problem has a more complicated answer, you can check to make sure that the system is parsing it correctly, and that the fact that your answer is incorrect is a result of your answer being wrong, rather than that it is formatted incorrectly.

I ask the following from you if you decide to participate in the beta:
  • Use your real name and grade and keep IDs appropriate. I will delete accounts that violate either one of these conditions.
  • Report any bugs with the system to me! These include broken links, bad formatting, anything that you think could be improved. This also includes feature requests!
  • Do not look up the problems or cheat on them in any other way. Because this is just a beta, I did not use original problems. However, these are still good practice problems and I think that much of the TJ math team can benefit from actually doing them.
  • Tell your friends! I want to get as many people as possible into the POTW system and to do that I need your help. However, make sure that they don't leave between now and the start of the real POTW.
Without further ado, I declare the beta for POTW open! The actual POTW will hopefully start shortly after break (maybe with 1-2 weeks in between). Note: This beta is completely voluntary and will not count for anything.

7 comments:

  1. You know, maybe you shouldn't get all of them from one source, since there may be people in the world who have taken it recently. And I might happen to be staying at the house of one of those people.

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  2. Also, the last 3 problems don't show up usually for me unless I wait like a few extra minutes.

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  3. Darn, it is probably okay to get all of them from one source for now since this is just a beta.

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  4. Also, perhaps the plain-text "POTW Beta" cell in the Scoreboard table should be replaced with a hyperlink to the problem page.

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  5. Slow loading times are a result of TJ's machine room being (apparently) stupidly hot, even in the middle of winter. There's nothing I can do about that. Sorry!

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