Mathematical question retrieval for web-based question-answering

• Main Author: Gayathri Gopalakrishnan
• Other Authors: Hui Siu Cheung
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer systems organization::Special-purpose and application-based systems
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/58951
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Mathematics is an essential subject, which can be applied in various areas of expertise. Thus, excelling in this core subject would help Secondary School students to adapt themselves better to the mathematical skills required for further education as well as for employment. Traditionally, books serve as the main source of information and practice exercises as students prepare for the ‘A’ - level and ‘O’ – level examinations. However, with the recent rapid expansion in the applications of the Internet and mobile devices, students and educators are looking to online resources to guide them in their preparation for examinations. Thus, the main aim of this project is to develop a web – based mathematical question retrieval system for question – answering specifically for educational purposes. Due to an increasing demand for intelligent and efficient means of aiding in revision, a great number of measures have been taken to create and maintain online systems that result in a fruitful revision process for the student. However, most systems do not offer features such as Concept and Formula Tags and a variety of information retrieval options such as text – based, tag – based and formula – based search. These functionalities have been found to be extremely beneficial in allowing students to identify major concepts and formulae related to examination questions over the years using the custom tags as well as to efficiently look up specific questions using the various search options in addition to viewing related recommended questions to search results. In order to achieve the primary objective, the main emphasize while designing the system was to ensure a search functionality was provided to users to enable them to retrieve questions based on custom concept and formula tags created, the mathematical formulae used in the question, as well as keywords generated from questions. The web application uses the “GCE ‘A’-Level H2 Mathematics” subject as the platform for investigating the efficiency and relevance of various information retrieval techniques and search functionalities in addition to the creation of Concept and Formula Tags. The dataset utilized consisted of questions and answers from previous examination papers, with associated text, images and mathematical formulae.