The forum is on "How do I ...", and my question is

"How do I get MapleTA to be reliable in marking symbolic answers?"

 

It is OK at marking wrong answers wrong. The difficulty I'm having is that too many equivalent correct answers are also marked wrong.

The class sizes are around 500 students, and it is very tedious checking their grumbles about mismarking.

 

Examples:

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I had an instance, using MapleSoft's IntroToCalcUnit1 questions, where

Yes, I know that one wouldn't do this in production use, but I'm just trying to set the  mapleTA up.

My "student" users are just me at present. It seems very easy to inadvertently lock assignments.

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This is a new user question. mapleTA3.01 is installed on an Ubuntu linux server here at maths.uwa.edu.au and on SUSE linux at maths.curtin.edu.au across the river here. We have classes (around 1000 students at each institution) about to start soon and have been forced by the maple vendor to switch from AiM to mapleTA. (And, no worries, we will try. The March start date is scary.) We are having problems with most maple-type questions, displaying maths. Intermittently, the gif for the maths does not seem to get written. These are from the maplesoft Calculus questions. It isn't in anything peculiar