Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources How does Alcumus work?

DS signed up for Alcumus at the artofproblemsolving site. Apparently, it goes from Pre-algebra to Counting. I have some not so obvious questions. DS completed Pre-algebra in school last year. Is everyone supposed to start with pre-algebra anyhow as Alcumus isn't really a course per se but practice problems? DS selected a high difficulty rating on alcumus so that he can progress through the topics quicker as well as have more interesting problems. I am not sure if that is why his Pre-algebra problems are being credited in Algebra as well? DS claims that he didn't skip from Pre-algebra to Algebra and he has no reason to lie. However, he did admit to skipping to Counting at some point, which has some problems that are quite hard for him. I told him that he isn't suppose to do Counting until after Pre-algebra Algebra, Geometry and Number Theory as that is the highest level subject according to their sequence. On second thought, I wonder if perhaps I should tell him to go ahead and do Counting but reduce the difficulty level to average or even lower if he is interested. I am not trying to homeschool/accelerate him in Algebra as he will be studying that in the fall. Alcumus is just to provide him with some math problems over the summer if he is interested. Anyone with a working knowledge of Alcumus who wants to weigh in?

Just quickly - on bus! - I'd say don't worry about it, allow, even encourage, your DS to play around with the settings and focus topics to taste. It deliberately mixes up questions anyway, and although you can get it to do things sort of in order that isn't the normal way to use it.

To follow up a bit: Alcumus is adaptive in a way that seems to work pretty well, once you realise that they aren't aiming to give you only problems you'll find straightforward! I don't think you need to worry about his settings; if he starts getting things wrong or giving up on questions, it will dial down the difficulty. It's normal that the same question counts for both Prealgebra and Algebra. I didn't remember that Counting was supposed to be harder than the other stuff, and honestly that doesn't sound right to me, though it's going to depend on the individual; but even if it is, there are plenty of easy questions in it, and it should give them to him if he needs them. Just for comparison, here's DS's crazy profile (hmm, can I do a picture here? meh, only if I put it on the web first, somewhere that won't break my anonymity):

[well, for now, imagine a very spiky profile, with islands of green meaning mastered interspersed pseudorandomly with islands of red which typically mean topics on which Alcumus has never asked him a question, in no particular order, with his level in Prealgebra far lower than his level in any other topic, because Prealgebra was introduced long after he first used Alcumus!]

DS is very inconsistent about using Alcumus (goes through phases of using it daily and then doesn't touch it for months), practically never gives up on any question or gets any question wrong (because I help if necessary - the 2 qs he's got wrong and 1 he's given up on relate to cases where I couldn't help, and I think include at least one case where the given answer was wrong, as well as at least one where we both made the same stupid mistake!). He did "follow book" Geometry once, while doing ALEKS geometry, but started half way through, so he has a lot more green at the hard parts of that than the easy parts. (He's now doing AOPS geometry - I'll post on that shortly - leading to the odd situation that this sets specific topics as homework, and he has already got all the hard ones from the end of the course but not the easy ones from the beginning! But he's still getting value out of them. I'm not sure whether he, in particular, is adaptively being given hard questions on the elementary topics, but I think there may be some of that going on.) More generally, sometimes he sets a focus topic but more often he just leaves it to Alcumus.

AoPS counting and number theory problems are not as difficult as algebra 1. But geometry can be very hard.

I've just got DS7 signed up for Alcumus, but he hasn't started using it yet. On the Settings page
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/liz/Alcumus/index.php?#settings
It says
"
Problem Difficulty
A lower difficulty setting will cause your topic progress and subject rating to move more slowly.
[ ]Easy
[ ]Normal
[ ]Hard
[ ]Insane
"
(It currently has Normal selected (by default).)
What exactly is it that this choice controls?
Any suggestions for what setting to choose?

For context, DS7 has just finished grade 5 maths (home/virtual schooling with k12.com). He hasn't "officially" done prealgebra yet, but he has self-taught himself much of prealgebra by playing around online. Most of what he has seen is "routine schoolwork", and he has not seen much in the way of "challenging problems".

(Bump)

Any advice about Alcumus settings?

As described, based on my experience with learning software, I'd say the settings should be called Rate to Mastery. Essentially, the question it answers is how much content should be successfully answered before the next level of difficulty is presented. I haven't experimented with the settings for DS, but he has a compulsion to choose anything labelled Insane and once he saw the settings, that was that.

DS has had it set at Normal and at Easy at different times and tbh, I didn't notice any difference. Haven't tried the harder settings. Sorry!

The "Settings" allows you to choose the level of difficulty and how much repetition you'd like in a particular topic. When you get a problem, you can also choose your "Focus Topic" by clicking on the pencil sign on the RHS. You can work on a particular topic, or to follow the chapters in their books, i.e., focusing on Pre-Algebra, or Algebra, etc. They will occasionally throw in review problems from areas that have been mastered. Hope this helps.

Thanks - good advice and I ended up leaving DS to it.