Understanding Quiz Answer Rounding Rules

When rounding in Arithmetic and Significant Figure Question Answer Precision, TCU Online automatically applies the rounding rule when assessing answers that contain decimal places. Decimals that end between 1-4 will round down and decimal numbers that end between 5-9 will round the next number up.

Example One: 3.41 * 25 = 85.25

If you create an arithmetic question and set the Answer Precision to 1, the correct answer using is 85.3.

Example Two: -3.41* 25 = -85.25

If you create an arithmetic question and set the Answer Precision to 1, the correct answer using  is -85.3.

You can enter a unit type (mm, cm, grams, inches, etc.) to assess if answers include correct units of measurement. For significant figures questions, you can select a percentage to assign a weighted points value to the measurement unit. If you use units in your question, you can set the following Evaluation options:

  • Case Insensitive – Auto-grading searches for a matching character pattern in the answer text with or without letter case correctness.
  • Case-Sensitive – Auto-grading searches for a matching character pattern in the answer text that must have letter case correctness.
  • Regular Expression – Auto-grading uses meta-characters to search for one or more matching strings in the answer text’s character pattern. What you set as meta-character parameters helps determine letter case sensitivity.

You can also adjust the Tolerance for the questions that will deduct a percentage of points for having too many or too few significant figures instead of penalizing the student for the whole question.