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Author FAQ

How can I improve the documentation?

Please either edit the docs on github, or send us a pull request. Your contributions are very welcome.

How can I report a bug or make a suggestion?

Please read this page first! Contributions are very welcome. Please see the community page for more specific details.

Can I write questions in multiple languages?

Yes, see support for multiple languages.

What is LaTeX? Where can I get help learning LaTeX?

LaTeX is a document preparation system. For STACK questions we only need some simple LaTeX, so please do not be put off. In particular STACK only really makes use of LaTeX for mathematical markup, and does not use the document structure tags.

An introduction for those totally new to LaTeX is found here.
The mathematics environment is described here.
Details about LaTeX are available from http://www.latex-project.org/guides/.

Note that some of the more complex examples will not work on STACK. Just keep things simple.

Can I add HTML to CAS-enabled text?

Yes. You can use HTML tags as usual. For example, you can use these tags to insert references to images etc. It's even possible to embed question values within image tags to allow calls to third-party dynamic graph generators.

The Simple Venn sample question demonstrates using the Google charts API:

Why does a Maxima function not work in STACK?

Not all Maxima functions are enabled by STACK, for obvious security reasons. It may be that your function belongs to a library which STACK does not load by default. Do you need to use Maxima's load command to use it? If so, you will need to ask your system administrator or the developers to add a load command so that this library becomes available.

Some libraries are optional and may not be included by your local installation.

You should also be aware that there are also a number of functions defined by STACK which are not standard Maxima functions. The command you need may well not be enabled since you should use one STACK provides instead.

How can I change which Maxima functions STACK allows?

This is a job for a developer. Please contact us.

How can I use subscripts in STACK

Note there is a subtle (and perhaps confusing) difference between atoms in Maxima. The strings a1 and a_1 are both atoms in Maxima, and are different. However, the display is very similar, using subscripts. A further confusion arises since list elements are also displayed subscripted. E.g. a[1] will also be displayed with a subscript.

The atoms a1 and a_1 are not considered to be algebraically equivalent.

See the inputs extra option consolidatesubscripts.

Normally an atom theta2 is displayed by Maxima as {\it theta_2}. This is problematic as the Greek letter is not rendered as LaTeX \theta, and the subscript is in italic which is wrong. We have fixed this in STACK. Maxima "atoms" with a subscript will be displayed using subscripts. For example

theta_2

will be displayed as \(\theta_2\). Both teachers and students can use this mechanism. However, this relies on the expression being a Maxima atom. (See the maxima manual).

Teachers can create an inert function which displays using subscripts.

texsub(a,b)

is typeset as \({a}_{b}\) i.e. {a}_{b} in LaTeX. This enables subscripts to be displayed with non-atomic things like

texsub(F,1-2)

with simplification off will be displayed as \({F}_{1-2}\). The complex expression in the subscript cannot form an atomic Maxima expression.

Note that the process of converting theta_07 into the intermediate texsub form internally results in the texsub(theta,7) which removes the leading zero. This is a known issue, for which a workaround is to directly use texsub(theta,"07"). This does not produce optimal LaTeX.

How can I test out STACK specific functions in a Maxima session?

Details of how to load STACK functions into a command line Maxima session are given in the STACK-Maxima sandbox.

How can I confirm my student's answer is fully simplified?

The philosophy of STACK is to establish properties of the student's answer. "Simplify" is an ambiguous notion. For example, \(1\) is simpler than \(2^0\) but \(2^{2^{10}}\) is probably simpler than writing the integer it represents in decimals. Everyone would agree that \(x+2\) is simpler than \(\frac{x^2-4}{x-2}\), but we might argue that the first expression below is simpler.

\[ \frac{x^{12}-1}{x-1} = x^{11}+x^{10}+x^9+x^8+x^7+x^6+x^5+x^4+x^3+x^2+x+1.\]

Simplify is often taken implicitly to mean "the shortest equivalent expression", but this issue is often not discussed.

To avoid these problems, STACK expects teachers to specify the properties they want. For example, if you want the factored form you should test for this, not describe it as "simplified".

In STACK a very useful test is equivalence up to associativity and commutativity of the basic arithmetic operations of addition and multiplication. This is often what teachers need in this case.

Why doesn't Maxima give `int(1/x,x)=log(abs(x))`?

Because \( \int \frac{1}{x}dx = \log(|x|) \) is OK on either the negative or positive real axis, but it is not OK in the complex plane. There is a switch that controls this, however.

(%i199) integrate(1/x,x);
(%o199) log(x)

(%i200) integrate(1/x,x), logabs : true;
(%o200) log(abs(x))

Why don't I get anything back from the CAS?

Debugging questions can be difficult. We have not written a full parser, so we cannot trap all the errors. If all else fails, you may need to examine exactly the expression which is being sent to Maxima.

To do this go to

Site administration -> Plugins -> Question types -> STACK

Ensure that CAS debugging is checked.

Then, you should get error reporting. As an example navigate to

Site administration -> Plugins -> Question types -> STACK -> Healthcheck

There you can see an example of an expression sent to Maxima. Namely:

cab:block([ RANDOM_SEED, OPT_NoFloats, sqrtdispflag, simp, assume_pos, caschat0, caschat1], stack_randseed(0), make_multsgn(dot), make_complexJ(i), OPT_NoFloats:true, sqrtdispflag:true, simp:true, assume_pos:false, print("[STACKSTART Locals= [ ") , print("0=[ error= ["), cte("caschat0",errcatch(caschat0:plot([x^4/(1+x^4),diff(x^4/(1+x^4),x)],[x,-3,3]))) , print("1=[ error= ["), cte("caschat1",errcatch(caschat1:plot([sin(x),x,x^2,x^3],[x,-3,3],[y,-3,3]))) , print("] ]") , return(true) );

Expressions such as this can be copied into the STACK-Maxima sandbox and evaluated. The errors returned here might help track down the problem.

The issue is normally that you have tried to create a syntactically invalid maxima command. For example [a,,b] will crash Maxima. Since we have not created a full parser, all syntax errors like this are not yet trapped.