Troubleshooting

This page gives advice on troubleshooting Parsons questions.

If your matching problem is not displaying properly, in particular if the all the items are displayed in a single yellow block, then double-check that you have spelled the keys of the JSON inside the Parsons block correctly as described below. They should be a subset of

{"steps", "options", "headers", "available_header", "index"}

and a superset of

{"steps"}

For technical reasons this is one error that we are unable to validate currently.

State

The state of the problem at any given point in time during question answer takes on the following format:

{used: usedState, available: availableState}

where usedState and availableState are arrays containing the keys specified in steps of the JSON in the answer. In all cases, availableState is a flat array of variable length. The shape of usedState depends on which of the four layouts is being used. We give examples below.

1. Proof: In this case usedState will have shape (1, 1, ?), where ? indicates the variable dimension. For example:

[[parsons input="ans1"]]
{
  "1":"Assume that \\(n\\) is odd.",
  "2":"Then there exists an \\(m\\in\\mathbb{Z}\\) such that \\(n=2m+1\\).",
  "3":"\\[ n^2 = (2m+1)^2 = 2(2m^2+2m)+1.\\]",
  "4":"Define \\(M=2m^2+2m\\in\\mathbb{Z}\\) then \\(n^2=2M+1\\).",
}
[[/parsons]]

might have, at a given time, a state that looks like:

{
    used : [
        [
            ["1", "3"]
        ]
    ]
    available : 
        ["2", "4"]
}

1. Column grouping: In this case usedState will have shape (n, 1, ?), where n is the number of columns and ? indicates the variable dimension. For example:

[[parsons columns="2"]]
{
    "f" : "\\(y = x^2\\)",
    "g" : "\\(y = x^3\\)",
    "quad" : "Quadratic",
    "cubic" : "Cubic",
}
[[/parsons]]

might have, at a given time, a state that looks like:

{
    used : [
        [
            ["f"]
        ],
        [
            ["quad", "cubic"]
        ]
    ],
    available : ["g"]
}

1. Row grouping : In this case usedState will have shape (m, 1, ?), where m is the number of rows and ? indicates the variable dimension. The state of Row grouping is just the same as Column grouping if m and n are the same.
2. Grid : In this case usedState will have shape (n, m, 1), where n is the number of columns and m is the number of rows. For example:

[[parsons columns="2" rows="3"]]
{
    "f" : "\\(y = x^2\\)",
    "g" : "\\(y = x^3\\)",
    "h" : "\\(y = x^4\\)",
    "quad" : "Quadratic",
    "cubic" : "Cubic",
    "quart" : "Quartic"
}
[[/parsons]]

might have, at a given time, a state that looks like:

{
    used : [
        [
            ["f"],
            ["g"],
            [],
        ],
        [
            ["quad"],
            [],
            ["quart"]
        ]
    ],
    available : ["h", "cubic"]
}