We’re putting the finishing touches on a big update for Piqosity; the Student Dashboard is just about to go live. Ostensibly, the dashboard is just a bunch of statistics laid out nicely. But it represents much more than that.

With this update, Piqosity becomes much more intelligent as it is now able to direct students along a study path. In order to do that, the system now calculates and stores a lot of statistics. Here’s what they are and how they’re calculated.

Key Measurements and Statistics

  1. Course Hierarchy
  2. Number of Questions
  3. Question Difficulty Level
  4. Accuracy
  5. Weighted Score
  6. Questions Worked
  7. Date of last practice
  8. Norm Group

Course Hierarchy is the layers of structure for a course. Currently, there are three layers:

  1. Course (ISEE)
  2. Topic (Verbal Reasoning)
  3. Subtopic (Synonyms)

Number of Questions is simply a count of how many questions there are at each level of the Course Hierarchy.

Question Difficulty is assigned to each question.  Currently, there are three levels:

  1. Easy = 1.0
  2. Medium = 3.0
  3. Hard = 5.0

Accuracy is simply the percentage of questions that a user gets right. For example, if a user works through 10 questions and gets 7 right, his accuracy is 70%.

Weighted Score is calculated for each question and aggregates also at the subtopic, topic, and course levels from two components:

  1. Accuracy – 1 if accurate, 0 if incorrect
  2. Difficulty – 5 for hard, 3 for medium, and 1 for easy

These two values are then multiplied together for each question.  For example, a student who answers a hard question gets 5 points.  

Questions Worked is simply a count of how many questions a user has worked at the subtopic, topic, and course level.

Date of Last Practice is used to determine how many days have passed since the student last worked on a particular subtopic, topic, or course.

Norm Group is how the a user’s performance compares to other users who attempted the same question. We currently track the basics of this statistic at the question level where we say how many students have attempted the question and how many got it right. 

User Actions

  1. Question Goal
  2. Score Goal
  3. Overall Goal
  4. Practice Course
  5. Practice Topic
  6. Practice Subtopic

Question Goal is the number of questions that a user tells Piqosity they want to try to accomplish.

Score Goal is the Weighted Score that the user tells Piqosity they want to try to accomplish. The range is 5 to 0, with 5 being the maximum possible score (all Hard questions answered correctly) and 0 being the lowest possible score (no questions answered correctly). For perspective, a score of 4.0 would be nearly equivalent to an A on the American grading system.

Overall Goal or simply “Goal” is a percentage calculation that Piqosity makes by combining the Question and Score Goals. This percentage is prominently displayed on the Student Dashboard to indicate overall progress. The formula is (Correct Hard Questions + Correct Medium Questions + Correct Easy Questions) divided by (Question Goal + Additional Questions)

Practice Course is a big button on the student dashboard that automatically generates a 25-question quiz across all or most topics and subtopics in the course. It pulls questions from subtopics with the lowest Weighted Scores according to the user’s chosen difficulty:

  • 25 Questions total
  • 5 subtopics with the lowest Weighted Scores
  • 5  Questions per Subtopic
  • Difficulty Settings
    • “Push Yourself” causes Piqosity to select problems that are the next level UP from the student’s current Weighted Score on a subtopic. For example, if a student currently has a Weighted Score of 3.0 in subtopic A, the system will give them 5.0 Hard questions only
    • “Reinforce Skills” causes Piqosity to select problems that are the next level DOWN from the student’s current Weighted Score on a subtopic.  For example, if a student currently has a Weighted Score of 3.0 in subtopic A, the system will give them 1.0 Easy questions only

Practice Topic is a play button on the student dashboard that automatically generates a 15 question quiz across all subtopics in the selected topic. It pulls questions from subtopics with the lowest Weighted Scores according to the user’s chosen difficulty:

  • 15 Questions total
  • 3 subtopics
  • 5 questions per subtopic
  • Difficulty Settings
    • Push Yourself
    • Reinforce Skills

Practice Subtopic is a play button on the student dashboard that automatically generates a 15 question quiz across all subtopics in the selected topic. It pulls questions from subtopics with the lowest Weighted Scores according to the user’s chosen difficulty:

  • 10 Questions total
  • 1 subtopics
  • 10 questions per subtopic
  • Difficulty Settings
    • Push Yourself
    • Reinforce Skills