# RMarkdown Format¶

Otter Assign is compatible with Otter’s R autograding system and currently supports Jupyter notebook and RMarkdown master documents. The format for using Otter Assign with R is very similar to the Python format with a few important differences.

As with Python, Otter Assign for R also allows you to specify various assignment generation arguments in an assignment metadata code block.


BEGIN ASSIGNMENT
init_cell: false
export_cell: true
# etc.



You can find a list of available metadata keys and their defaults in the notebook format section.

Here is an example question in an Otter Assign-formatted Rmd file:

**Question 1:** Find the radius of a circle that has a 90 deg. arc of length 2. Assign this
value to ans.1


BEGIN QUESTION
name: q1
manual: false
points:
- 1
- 1


{r}
ans.1 <- 2 * 2 * pi * 2 / pi / pi / 2 # SOLUTION


{r}
## Test ##
expect_true(ans.1 > 1)
expect_true(ans.1 < 2)


{r}
## Hidden Test ##
tol = 1e-5



For code questions, a question is a some description markup, followed by a solution code blocks and zero or more test code blocks. The description must contain a code block (enclosed in triple backticks ) that begins with BEGIN QUESTION on its own line, followed by YAML that defines metadata associated with the question.

The rest of the code block within the description cell must be YAML-formatted with the following f ields (in any order):

• name (required) - a string identifier that is a legal file name (without an extension)

• manual (optional) - a boolean (default false); whether to include the response cell in a PDF for manual grading

• points (optional) - a number or list of numbers for the point values of each question. If a list of values, each case gets its corresponding value. If a single value, the number is divided by the number of cases so that a question with $n$ cases has test cases worth $\frac{\text{points}}{n}$ points.

As an example, the question metadata below indicates an autograded question q1 with 3 subparts worth 1, 2, and 1 points, resp.


BEGIN QUESTION
name: q1
points:
- 1
- 2
- 1



### Solution Removal¶

Solution cells contain code formatted in such a way that the assign parser replaces lines or portions of lines with prespecified prompts. The format for solution cells in Rmd files is the same as in Python and R Jupyter notebooks, described here. Otter Assign’s solution removal for prompts is compatible with normal strings in R, including assigning these to a dummy variable so that there is no undesired output below the cell:

# this is OK:
. = " # BEGIN PROMPT
some.var <- ...
" # END PROMPT


### Test Cells¶

The test cells are any code cells following the solution cell that begin with the comment ## Test ## or ## Hidden Test ## (case insensitive). A Test is distributed to students so that they can validate their work. A Hidden Test is not distributed to students, but is used for scoring their work. When writing tests, each test cell maps to a single test case and should raise an error if the test fails. The removal behavior regarding questions with no solution provided holds for R notebooks.

## Test ##
testthat::expect_true(some_bool)

## Hidden Test ##
testthat::expect_equal(some_value, 1.04)


Otter Assign also supports manually-graded questions using a similar specification to the one described above. To indicate a manually-graded question, set manual: true in the question metadata. A manually-graded question is defined by three parts:

• (optionally) a prompt

• a solution

Manually-graded solution cells have two formats:

• If the response is code (e.g. making a plot), they can be delimited by solution removal syntax as above.

• If the response is markup, the the solution should be wrapped in special HTML comments (see below) to indicate removal in the sanitized version.

To delimit a markup solution to a manual question, wrap the solution in the HTML comments <!-- BEGIN SOLUTION --> and <!-- END SOLUTION --> on their own lines to indicate that the content in between should be removed.

<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION -->
solution goes here
<!-- END SOLUTION -->


To use a custom Markdown prompt, include a <!-- BEGIN/END PROMPT --> block with a solution block, but add NO PROMPT inside the BEGIN SOLUTION comment:

<!-- BEGIN PROMPT -->
prompt goes here
<!-- END PROMPT -->

<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION NO PROMPT -->
solution goes here
<!-- END SOLUTION -->


If NO PROMPT is not indicate, Otter Assign automatically replaces the solution with a line containing _Type your answer here, replacing this text._.

An example of a manually-graded code question:

**Question 7:** Plot $f(x) = \cos e^x$ on $[0,10]$.


BEGIN QUESTION
name: q7
manual: true


{r}
# BEGIN SOLUTION
x = seq(0, 10, 0.01)
y = cos(exp(x))
ggplot(data.frame(x, y), aes(x=x, y=y)) +
geom_line()
# END SOLUTION



An example of a manually-graded written question (with no prompt):

**Question 5:** Simplify $\sum_{i=1}^n n$.


BEGIN QUESTION
name: q5
manual: true


<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION -->
$\frac{n(n+1)}{2}$
<!-- END SOLUTION -->


An example of a manuall-graded written question with a custom prompt:

**Question 6:** Fill in the blank.


BEGIN QUESTION
name: q6
manual: true


<!-- BEGIN PROMPT -->
The mitochonrida is the ___________ of the cell.
<!-- END PROMPT -->

<!-- BEGIN SOLUTION NO PROMPT -->
powerhouse
<!-- END SOLUTION -->
`