Square 5 Incomplete

For a 05–432 assignment, I was given the task to build a cognitive rule-based tutor that using an adaptive inner loop to solve a square root math problem.

Problem: This interface teaches students a shortcut strategy to square numbers that end with 5.

Steps:

1. Take a number that you want to square that ends with the number 5.
2. Drop the 5, and keep the tens digit.
3. Add 1 to that digit.
4. Multiply that digit you kept in step 2with the number you found in step 3.
5. Append 25 to the product.

I first inspected the working memory that was incomplete by comparing it to the working memory diagram.

The Working Memory Diagram for This Assignment.

I created 4 more rules: rule AddOne, productValues, appending25, and finalAnswer. In addition, I created a buggy rule to hypothesize a possible error a student may input when working through this problem.

Nools Code for Rule AddOne

Rule AddOne would allow the student to add one to the digit from step 2.

Nools Code for ProductValues

Rule ProductValues allows the student to multiple step 2 and 3 from rule firstPart and rule AddOne.

Nools code for rule appending25

Rule appending25 allows the student to append 25 to the product from rule productValues.

Nools Code for rule finalAnswer

Rule finalAnswer gives the final answer for the student to input in the interface.

Nools code for rule bootstrap

Rule bootstrap defines names and is used for the working memory.

Interface

The interface that complements the Nools Code was made in simple layout for easy visualization.

The interface for this problem as well as the console.

The console to the right was used to use different commands to request detailed information about the cognitive model’s functioning. Some functions that I have used are: print(Facts) to see how the working memory changes on each step and print(ConflictTree) to show how CTAT searched for rule acitivations.