KenSStanley
commented
7 years ago After just one day of use by four mathletes, my thoughts on this have evolved just a bit. I am not sure how this affects the heuristic on whether or not to advance levels.
J McC was the only mathlete who chose to repeat levels. She did so six times. She repeated the first level and I suspect that she was still trying to figure out how the game works at that point. On the other five times that she repeated a give level, she was three faster the second time through (35 versus 105 seconds) and required 37% fewer moves (24 versus 37). She choose not to repeat two levels, the second one that she solved and level RHJ6, which took her 206 seconds to solve. My suspicion, based on no facts, is that she did not repeat the second one that she solved because it was too easy and that she did not repeat level RHJ6 because it was too hard.
My conclusion from this is that three minutes is too long. I also decided that Jeiliani was at too high a level and hand bounced her down to a lower level through a special hack in app/src/main/java/com/duboisproject/rushhour/Board.java
I would like to put a bit more sophistication into the leveling. Here are some thoughts:
Up through Rush Hour Junior level 10, if it takes them 3 or more minutes to solve a challenge, they should not level up.
If it takes them more than three times as many moves as the optimal (which we can define as the minimum number taken by any other player) they should not level up.
On the other hand, they should not be given a challenge that they have already solved that day.
If they solve a challenge in under a minute, or less than 3 seconds per move (counting moves as they are counted in this game) they should move up faster, say moving up three levels.
If they solve a challenge in less than five seconds per move, they should move up two levels. If it takes them ten or more seconds per move, they should not level up at all.
It might be nice to ask them if they want a harder challenge or if they would prefer another challenge at the same level. May "same level" versus "harder please". But, I don't know.