Often, the hardest part of creating a MultiDocs question is setting up a parameter that produces suitable numbers. We have recently released two new options that can help you.

New Option For Range and RangeEx

The Range and RangeEx parameters now have a new option available – ExcludeMultiplesOf

$p=range(low, high, increment(optional), excludemultiplesof(optional))

An example command might be $p=range(200,400,2,10)

This produces a range of values between 200 and 400, incrementing by 2, excluding all multiples of 10

$p will take a value from this set. {202, 204, 206, 208, 212, 214, 216, 218, 222, 224,… 388, 392, 394, 396, 398}

This extension allows you to quickly remove values which might prove too easy for your particular question.

NoCommonFactor Parameter

NoCommonFactor parameters allow you to access numbers which do not share a common factor.

$p=nocommonfactor(number)

$p=nocommonfactor(number,low,high)

Notes:

• low and high are optional and do NOT need to be factors of the number.
• low and high can be higher (or lower) than number
• The nocommonfactor command will return 1.

Examples:

$p=nocommonfactor(12)                $p will be chosen from the set {1,5,7,11}.

$p=nocommonfactor(12,10,36)        $p will be chosen from the set {11,13,17,19,23,25,29,31,35}.

The most common reason for using a nocommonfactor parameter is to create numerators for fractions which cannot be simplified.