Any Finance teachers here? Calculated questions.

Any Finance teachers here? Calculated questions.

by Keith Richards -
Number of replies: 1

I've been writing calculated simple questions for a Finance college course I'm teaching, and it's actually quite fun! Would be happy to share some things I've learned. They can help cut down cheating, and they are good for practice tests because students get different versions of the question each time.

Here's a sample. Items in curly brackets are wildcards. This one is for payback period for uneven cash flows.

"Given the following, what is the payback period? (Two decimal places.)


Year 0${cf0}
Year 1${cf1}
Year 2${cf2}
Year 3${cf3}
Year 4$432
Year 5$521

For this one, I had to have ranges for cf0 to cf3 wildcards that would place payback sometime in year two. Here's the correct answer formula

2+(({cf0}*-1)-({cf1}+{cf2}))/(({cf1}+{cf2}+{cf3})-({cf1}+{cf2}))

Anyway, be great if there were others who want to discuss these types of questions.

One tip - present / future value questions were really hard to figure out at first, as I still don't know how Moodle handles exponents. Just use present/future value interest factors, and it becomes much easier. True, you can't change the rate for every student, but you can still change the discounted/compounding cash flows.

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In reply to Keith Richards

Re: Any Finance teachers here? Calculated questions.

by AL Rachels -
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My math skills are rusty as it has been 24 years since I taught my one and only math course. However, I used to help my Computer Applications students work on their math skills by posting practice quizzes for them. I found that one of the most versatile and easy to use question types were the Variable numeric, Variable numeric set, and Variable numeric set with units. The Variable numeric set question type is required if you install either of the other two plugins.

What I really liked about the question types is that you could set up a random calculated variable for each variable in your question. e.g. x=rand_int(1,10)

So for a practice, order of operations, question such as: How much is x2 + y x z = _____?
I would use three variable: x=rand_int(1,10), y=rand_int(1,10), and z=rand_int(1,10)

This makes if possible for a student to practice multiple attempts without ever seeing the "same" problem, but still simple enough to work mentally without resorting to calculators or pencil and paper.

Duplicating the question, then changing the operators in the question and in the answer formula, made it quick and easy to make multiple types of, order of operations, questions for them, as most of my 7th and 8th grades students generally were pretty weak at that type of question.

Using this type of question, you should be able to change the rate for every student and also the discounted/compounding cash flows.
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